Empedocles

Empedocles lived around 440 BC in Acreages’, on the south coast of Sicily. He was a younger contemporary of Parmenides, though his doctrines were somehow akin to Heraclitus.

In most Greek cities, including Sicily, there was a constant conflict between democracy and tyranny. The leader of whichever party was defeated was executed or exiled. Those exiled seldom scrupled to enter into negotiation with the enemies of Greece-Persia in the east and Carthage in the west. Empedocles who was a democrat didn’t choose any of them after his banishment and rather preferred a life of sage.

Empedocles was a queer mixture of a scientist, a philosopher and a heretic.

Science: His most important contribution to science was his discovery of air as a separate substance. This he proved by the observation that when a bucket or any similar vessel is put upside down into water, the water does not enter into the bucket. He also discovered an example of centrifugal force: that if a cup of water is whirled round at the end of a string, the water does not come out. He had his own theory for evolution and the survival of the fittest. He also believed that moon and sun shines from the reflected light.

Cosmology: He established that the earth, air, fire and water are four basic elements. Each of these is ever lasting and every other thing in this world is a compound of these basic elements. These substances are combined by Love and Strife. Love and Strife are also basic substances along with the four. Period of dominance of love and strife keeps changing. Every compound substance is temporary; only the elements together with love and strife are everlasting.

Empedocles held that the material world is a sphere; that in golden age strife was outside the sphere and love inside and then gradually strife starts entering the sphere and displacing love at worst completely outing it. The process then reverses.

Religion: He had an orphic/Pythagorean view of religion. At times he speaks himself exuberantly as God and at other as a great sinner undergoing expiation for his impiety. It is said that he jumped into the crater of Mount Etna to prove that he is God.

Tanam farsooda jaa paara

A Qawwali is a sufi devotional song. A Qawwali can be classified into several categories:

• Hamd: A song in praise of Allah. Traditionally a Qawwali begins with a Hamd.
• Naat: A song in praise of Prophet Muhammad. A Hamd is followed by a Naat.
• Manqabat : A song in praise of Imam Ali.
• Marsiya: An elegy sung as lamentation over the death of much of Imam Husayn's family in the Battle of Karbala

I am writing down one of the most popular naats. The language is Persian. 

marhawa salle alla hastam sana khaane rasool

sad salaaam-e-man bazisne paak per jaane rasool

aye saba be pe ke mustaaka badar gaahe nabi

wo salaam dast basta peshe haiwanee rasool

(I am unable to find the meaning of above verses. I'll be grateful if anyone explains it to me.)

This naat is wriiten by Moulana Abd-ar-rahmaan Jaami.  Listen to Ustaad NFAK singing this naat.

 

Tanam Farsooda jaa para

Ze Hijra Ya Rasulullah

Dillam Paz Murda Aawara

Ze Isyaa. Ya Rasulullah!

( My body is dissolving in your separation

And my soul is breaking into pieces.

Due to my sins, My heart is weak and becoming enticed. Ya Rasulullah! )

Choon Soo’e Mun Guzar Aari

Manne Miskeen Zanaa Daari

Fida-E-Naqsh-E-Nalainat

Kunam Ja. Ya Rasulullah!

( When you pass by me

Then even in my immense poverty, ecstatically,

I must sacrifice my soul on your blessed sandal. Ya Rasulullah! ) 

Ze Jaame Hubb To Mustam

Ba Zanjeere To Dil Bustam

Nu’mi Goyam Ke Mun Bustum

Sukun Daa. Ya Rasulullah!

( I am drowned in the taste of your love

And the chain of your love binds my heart.

Yet I don’t say that I know this language (of love). Ya Rasulullah! )

Ze Kharda Khaish Hairaanam

Siyaa Shud Roze Isyaanam

Pashemaanam, Pashemaanam, Pashemaanam. Ya Rasulullah!  

( I am worried due to my misdeeds;

And I feel that my sins have blackened my heart.

I am in distress! I am in distress! I am in distress! Ya Rasulullah!)

Choon Baazoo’e Shafaa’at Raa

Khushaa’I Bar Gunaagara

Makun Mahruume Jaami Raa

Daraa Aan. Ya Rasulullah!

( When you spread your hands

to intercede for the sinners,

Then do not deprive Jaami of your

exalted intercession. Ya Rasulullah! )

(The transaltion is taken from net.)

Parmenides

Parmenides was native of Elea, in southern Italy. His date is uncertain but it is said that young Socrates met him when Parmenides was 65 years of age. This makes his birth around 515 BCE. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy.The southern Italian & Sicilian philosophy was more related to mysticism unlike the Ionian philosophy which was scientific and skeptical in nature. Mathematics, under the influence of Pythagoras, flourished in Magna Gracie in southern Italy and was entangled with mysticism and was not scientific as it is today.

Parmenides was influenced by Pythagoras but the extent to this influence is conjectural. Parmenides is historically important as he is considered to be inventor of Logic but what he really invented was metaphysics based on Logic.

His doctrine is divided into two parts “the way of truth” and the “the way of opinion”. The Way of Truth discusses that which is real, which contrasts in some way with the argument of the Way of Opinion, which discusses that which is illusory. In his poem ‘In Nature’ he illustrates his doctrine .He considered the senses deceptive, and condemned the multitude of sensible things as mere illusion. The only true being is “the One” which is infinite and indivisible. It is not, as in Heraclitus, a union of opposites, since there are no opposites. He apparently thought for instance, “Cold” means only “not Hot”, and “Dark” means only “not light”. “The One” of Parmenides is different from “The God” we conceive because Parmenides considered the one as a material and extended, for he speaks of it as a sphere present everywhere, encompassing everything hence indivisible and indestructible. Heraclitus maintained that everything changes; Parmenides retorted that nothing changes. The essentials of his teaching as follow:

“Thou canst not know what is not-that is impossible-nor utter it; for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be”

“How, then, can what is be going to be in future? Or how could it come into being? If it came into being, it is not, nor is it if it is going to be in the future. Thus is becoming extinguished and passing away not to be heard of."

"The thing that can be thought and that for the sake of which the thought exists is the same; for you cannot find thought without something that is, as to which it is uttered.”

Bertrand Russell explains this argument as:

“When you think you think of something; when you use a name, it must be the name of something. Therefore both thought and language requires objects outside themselves. And since you can think of a thing or speak of it at one time as well as at another, whatever can be thought of or spoken of must exist at all the time. Consequently there can be no change, since change consists in things coming into being or ceasing to be”

Parmenides contends that, since we know what is commonly regarded as past, it cannot be really be past, but must, in some sense , exist now. Hence he infers that there is no such thing as change.