The One and the Many

We live in a world of constant change, yet there is an underlying unity and stability.

Every human begins as an infant and then grows into an adult. Every adult is a different object than they were as a baby—in fact, they are unrecognizable as being the same object. Yet we recognize that something has remained the same though the infant has changed into something. Likewise a corpse is nothing like the original living being, but we still recognize that something has remained constant.

We see the same stability and constancy across objects. While the world is full of trees, there is still some constancy and stability to "treeness" which never seems to change.

Many believe that the infinity of things and their changes ultimately relate back to a single object, material, or idea. The problem of finding the one thing that lies behind all things in the universe is called the problem of the one and the many.

The problem of the one and the many assumes the universe is one thing. Because it is one thing, there must be one, unifying aspect behind everything. This aspect could be material, such as atoms. It could be an idea, such as number, or "mind." It could be divine, such as the Christian God or the Chinese concept of Shang-ti, the "Lord on High." The problem is figuring out what that one, unifying idea is.