"Arnold Hermann has produced a magnificent reply to those who wonder to what value does one espouse Philosophy as a way of understanding.  This book uses over 300 illustrations to provide a living, vibrant context for seeing Philosophy as an underlying, legitimatizing foundation for clear reasoning about not simply the world we sense, but about the process of thought itself.  Hermann’s gift to the reader is a concise re-examination of the role of reasoning and how the ingredients of that process led to the scientific method which has brought the planet such incredible breakthroughs in medicine, engineering, energy, and communications. Think:  viral vaccines, elegant suspension bridges, hydrogen vehicles, computer chips. Without some of the principles of logic that Parmenides advanced, steps such as verification, testing, elimination, and other key principles of consistency would not allow for scientific replication in the material world.  Even many legal rules that we rely upon today, such as evidentiary proofs, come not from the oft-credited Magna Carta, but from his formulations for his native city of Elea. . . . This beautifully illustrated book, measuring 10” x 8” is a reader’s delight because it is so carefully laid-out to balance text with photos and reproductions. . . The book can be marketed at our checkout counter easily because of its abundant color and enticing title.  It also belongs in Law, Ancient History, and of course, Philosophy."
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—Thomas Peter von Bahr
New Age Retailer

A Persuasive Ordering of Words
April 23, 2010

We only have a few score surviving lines of Parmenides' poem but the author, Arnold Hermann, has delivered a very rational, intelligible interpretation which is that the poem's meaning is logical and epistemological. In other words, it is a guide to thinking: how to gauge the conformance to fact of discourse, your own or someone else's,and how to be as sure as possible that you are not fooling yourself. Parmenides calls this an "evidential account" and the author points out that he was a legal theorist who drew up the laws for his Polis of Elea, which remained in force long after his death.So it would seem that what we now call philosophy may have developed out of Greek jurisprudence, not Greek religious cosmogony. The poem outlines a method of inquiry, a way to make sure an account is internally consistent and not self-contradictory and self-refuting. The first part of the book is an examination of other pre-socratics, in particular Pythagoras, and is filled with a lot of fascinating historical detail, e.g. the Pythagorean destruction of the city of Sybaris in 510 B.C. For me, the effect of the extensive material on Pythagoras was to throw into bold relief the last part of the book, containing the interpretation of Parmenides. What the two had in common was the search for the perfect premise. For Pythagoras it was the unit; for Parmenides it was "That IT IS". In Hermann's view, the discovery of irrationals proved the unit inadequate as a premise. I have read this book two or three times. It is an accomplishment to make the philosophy of Parmenides accessible to a "general reader" like myself who doesn't know any Greek. I have examined several other books on the subject and they all presuppose an advanced knowledge of Greek which puts them beyond the ken of all but Classics majors or specialists with advanced degrees. There are many handsome illustrations including the author's photographs of the ruins of Elea and Sybaris. This book would be valuable to virtually anyone with an inquiring mind and an interest in the ancient world and ancient philosophy.

—Anthony Bullock
San Francisco, Etats-Unis