implies that there is no substance, no river into which one can step twice.
Parmenides’ follower Zeno of Elea turned the infinite divisibility of motion
into a set of paradoxical arguments against the reality of change; the same
kind of arguments came up among the MuÀtazilites when the divisibility and
reality of substance were debated. Both networks were working the same deep
trouble space.
In Greece, the generations immediately after Parmenides responded with
an array of solutions: one was Democritus’ atomism, in which the atoms were
taken as Parmenidean ultimates, incapable of modification, with plurality and
change shunted to a level of the aggregations of atoms. Other solutions were
Platonic forms, upgrading the qualities of ontological permanence to the level
of abstraction and downgrading the experienced world to non-reality; another
was Aristotle’s distinction of potentiality and actuality. As we know from the
long run of intellectual history, none of these solutions was in principle imper-
vious to new assaults of deep trouble: Can the Democritean atoms truly
aggregate without giving rise to the problems of plurality and relation? Can
the plurality of Platonic Forms be reconciled with the premise that true reality
exists only in unity, the Form of all Forms? In Greece, the deep troubles were
not probed much further; halfhearted solutions held sway for many centuries
without bringing additional changes in metaphysical conceptions.^22 The most
acute standards were those held up by the Skeptics; but since their stance was
to cast doubt on all positions and to abstain from any positive constructions,
they too became part of the fixity of positions in Hellenistic philosophy. One
conclusion is that the absence of monotheism kept Greek philosophy from
probing these troubles more deeply, and thereby advancing further in the
abstraction-reflexivity sequence.^23
In India, the deep trouble of substance-relation, or of plurality in general,
was much more central. This shows us that the issue does arise independently
of monotheism; monotheism only gives it a specific form. The issue of sat-
karyavada and asatkaryavada, arising in Buddhist critiques of Samkhya dual-
ism, focuses on the same deep trouble in both its major forms. How can an
immutable material substance suddenly launch itself in motion to emanate the
universe? And how can it be related to a totally unlike substance of pure
consciousness, which does nothing but witness unperturbed what transpires
on the material plane? The Indian solution was to distinguish the concept of
potentiality from ontological actuality. In this case, the Aristotelean move was
countered by a further series of deep troubles: Is potentiality itself real? If not,
are we not back at the same dilemma? If, however, potentiality is real, how is
this additional substance related to the substance in which it inheres?
Indian philosophers pushed fairly early through the further levels of this
deep trouble. The Buddhists, whose initial stance in the field was to destroy
Sequence and Branch in the Social Production of Ideas^ •^841