On Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 6:12:31 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: > > > > On 1/28/2020 8:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > > Aristotle: Reality is what we see. > > Plato: what we see might be the shadow of a simpler reality > > (mathematical, musical, theological, …). > > > > Science is really born from that important platonic doubt. > > Nonsense. Religious mysticism was born from platonic doubt. Science was > already born in the school of Thales of Miletus. Aristotle at least > believed that observation was a source of knowledg; while platonists > depreacted it as illusory shadows of reality. St Agustine made > Platonism Christian and Thomas Aquinas made Aristotleanism Christian, > and those two, with the power of the Church behind them dominated > Western intellectual thought for nine centuries, known as "The Dark > Ages" for a good reason.
In spite of the problems with Platonism and Aristotelianism I don't think they are that pernicious. Plato, who we really have a vague idea about, may have been a central man and he came up with some mathematics of the polytopes in 3-dimensions. These were the regular polytopes of the tetrahedron, which is self dual, the cube dual to the octahedron and the dodecahedron dual to the icosahedron. He was a follower of Socrates, and all we know of Socrates was written by Plato. In these writings he came up with this idea about the relationship between physical reality and the epistemic domain of mathematics. We really do not know much more and it is very likely, as in the tradition of scribes in the ancient world, much of his writings, *Symposia, Euthryphro* etc, have a heavy contribution from his circle of associates. It is possible that Plato is a place name for followers of Socrates and all attributed to Plato were written by the "Platonists." Much the same is probably the case with Pythagoras and his cult-like followers called the Pythagoreans. The Bible has much the same, and the various books of the Bible with names are written heavily by follower scribes writing in that name. With Aristotle there is more reason to think his writings are central to a better known figure. While Aristotle's ideas of physics are wrong in many ways, they are in some ways a bit more rational than what Plato came up with. Some writers of the New Testament were knowledgeable of Plato and Aristotle, The Gospel of John is very Platonic and curiously the Book of Revelations attributed to John is Aristotelian. This elevated Plato and Aristotle to great heights, while Thales, Democrates etc were eclipsed. This intertwining of Plato and Aristotle with Christianity is what brought these philosophies so deeply into mysticism. LC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/98be4e4e-d26c-4301-88e4-95914aa57064%40googlegroups.com.
