Creativity and Advertising

9 Concrescence and the unfashionably new

Questions about ‘the new’ go back at least as far as thefifth century BCE when Parmenides remarked on its impossibility stating that what exists, exists; and what does not exist, does not (Steinitz, 1994). While at the outset straightforward enough, this soon leads us into difficulties because if only ‘something’ exists, then the existence of ‘nothing’ cannot be conceived, as ‘something cannot come from nothing’. Absolute reality, or what-is, means that change is impossible, and existence is uniform and timeless. Concurrently, in contrast to reason, a creature’s sensory faculties lead to premises that are false and deceitful. This cosmology sees reality as eternal and unchanging, and reality as very different ...