On 1/29/2020 3:03 AM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:
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
I agree. I carefully referred to "Platonism" and "Aristotelianism" as
the schools of thought attributed to Plato and Aristotle by the
scholastics; not necessarily identical to what the founders actually
thought. Plato's parable of the cave became a proof of mysticism and
the power of pure thought in writings of Christian theologians.
Brent
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