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Lecture Notes for Plato | The Development of Science | HON 280, Study notes of School management&administration

University of Nevada - Las Vegas (UNLV)School management&administration

Material Type: Notes; Class: DEVEL OF SCIENCE; Subject: Honors; University: University of Nevada - Las Vegas; Term: Unknown 1989;

Typology: Study notes

2009/2010

Uploaded on 02/24/2010

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HON 280 -- LECTURE FOUR (PLATO)
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE
As we noted last time, the first systematic philosopher with the
first systematic theory ff nature was Plato (born 427 BCE).
From Athens, a wealthy aristocratic family. Originated western
philosophy, especially western political philosophy. Great story
-- Syracuse. Dionysius I, II.
I. As we also noted last time, he has a peculiar deflationary
attitude toward the natural world.
A. He denigrated it. That is, he didn't think that it was the
highest object of study because it didn't have the highest
possible level of existence.
B. We illustrated this by recalling the allegory of the cave.
1. What is the horse shadow: Probably a visual
impression of a horse? Real
2. What is the horse puppet? A horse. Really real.
3. What is the horse running around on the surface of
the earth? The Form of horse. The really really real.
C. The idea is this: Concrete objects have less reality than
the forms of which they are implementations or in which
they participate. Why? Because the forms make concrete
instances intelligible in a way in which concrete instances
don't make the forms intelligible. More abstract things
1
pf3
pf4
pf5

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HON 280 -- LECTURE FOUR (PLATO)

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE

As we noted last time, the first systematic philosopher with the first systematic theory ff nature was Plato (born 427 BCE). From Athens, a wealthy aristocratic family. Originated western philosophy, especially western political philosophy. Great story -- Syracuse. Dionysius I, II. I. As we also noted last time, he has a peculiar deflationary attitude toward the natural world. A. He denigrated it. That is, he didn't think that it was the highest object of study because it didn't have the highest possible level of existence. B. We illustrated this by recalling the allegory of the cave.

  1. What is the horse shadow: Probably a visual impression of a horse? Real
  2. What is the horse puppet? A horse. Really real.
  3. What is the horse running around on the surface of the earth? The Form of horse. The really really real. C. The idea is this: Concrete objects have less reality than the forms of which they are implementations or in which they participate. Why? Because the forms make concrete instances intelligible in a way in which concrete instances don't make the forms intelligible. More abstract things

make possible the existence of concrete things in a way that doesn't work the other way around. And this is what makes them more real. D. Thus, true knowledge, for Plato, was a movement from the concrete to the abstract. II. How can we think about this in a way that keeps it from sounding too mystical? A. Think about the relation between the shadow and the puppet. The puppet explains why the shadow exists; it makes the occurrence of the shadow explicable or intelligible to us. Let's think more about this "making intelligible" relation. What is it supposed to be? Perhaps it's pretty clear in the case of the puppet/shadow case. What is it here? B. What is it in the case of the horse/form of horse case? Not causal, right? Let's look at some of the examples that Plato cites in which he tries to explain what it is.

  1. One occurs in a Platonic dialogue called the Symposium (210a-211b) in which Plato describes a party involving Socrates and a bunch of his drunken pinhead friends. In this dialogue, Socrates is trying to figure out the nature of beauty. This may seem odd, that beauty has a nature as horses have a nature, but it didn't seem odd at the time.

(e) The beauty of knowledge - Once proceeding down this path, the lover will naturally long for that which produces and makes intelligible good social institutions: knowledge. (f) Beauty itself - This is the platonic "form" of beauty itself. It is not a particular thing that is beautiful, but is instead the essence of beauty. Plato describes this level of love as a "wondrous vision," an "everlasting loveliness which neither comes nor ages, which neither flowers nor fades." It is eternal and isn't "anything that is of the flesh" nor "words" nor "knowledge" but consists "of itself and by itself in an eternal oneness, while every lovely thing partakes of it." (g) Even above this is the form of the Good. The form of beauty is itself a good to the extent that it participates in the form of the good. The form of the good, we may say, is really, really, really real. (What could be clearer than this?)

  1. Anyway: The idea is that knowledge concerning other things is similarly gained by progressing from a base physical instance of the thing sought to the eventual form of the thing sought. One then has

knowledge of the thing by having familiarity with its defining essence.

  1. So, in connection with natural science, what you have to understand first about Plato is that he doesn't credit it with much importance. There isn't much to know about it because it really isn't an object of knowledge. It doesn't have as much reality as the forms that it implements or instantiates.
  2. But, having said this, however, he does credit it some importance. He has a cosmogony and a cosmology. The cosmogony (in the Timeas ) involves a demiurge who imposes order on the chaos. (a) Because he is divine, he tries to order the world as intelligibly as possible, but the way this works is that he imposes an order on nature which then continues to operate more or less on its own without divine intervention. But mind is still present in nature to the extent that that it encodes the original intention. (b) As for Plato's physics, he assumed with everyone else that there are four basic elements: earth, water, air, and fire, and then associated these elements with different