6533b862fe1ef96bd12c5da4

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Alcune considerazioni sulla conversazione di Popper con “Parmenide”

subject

description

Although Popper contributed significantly to the doctrinal recovery of the so-called second part of the Parmenidean poem, his overall interpretation of Parmenides' thought nevertheless strengthened the traditional thesis that sees Parmenides as the father of metaphysics. It is quite well known, in fact, that Popper assimilated the Parmenidean doctrine of being to Einstein's theory of relativity, combining them both under the "label" of "Methaphysical Determinism". It is also known that Popper says he spoke directly with Einstein about this interpretative hypothesis - in a conversation in which he would have called him, precisely, "Parmenides" - and that the scientist had agreed enough with it and was left with no arguments to discuss his critical arguments. We are careful not to reject tout court that "sort of enigmatic correspondence, of enigmatic consonance - to use Severino's words - between the language of the theory of relativity and the language of the truth of being" (which Popper, however, was not the first to point out), but we believe we can show that this correspondence should eventually be investigated in different directions from that indicated by the German epistemologist, which we believe instead useful to subject to a more careful analysis to highlight its hermeneutical limits. With this paper we therefore intend to show the misunderstandings that emerge from Popper's interpretation when we compare it both with the textual testimonies in which Einstein had already answered directly to his observations about the concept of determinism, and with other textual evidences in which some statements of Einstein would indirectly defy the very kind of description that Popper proposed of the theory of relativity.