I agree. This is clearly a load of bullshit, but of course the idiotic will lap it up as they put it on the shelf next to other wonders of modern "scholarship" like the works of Erich von Daniken and David Icke.

Rather less reputable than New Scientist. And I'm speaking as someone who worked for the equivalent of New Scientist (and has read Plato in the original). This has about the same credibility as the Baconians who claim that Shakespeare was a front for Francis Bacon based on "mathematical structures." Cranks are writing and publishing stuff like this all the time; I've been first reader in comparable stuff. Next he'll claim that the GPS coordinates for Atlantis are encoded in the Allegory of the Cave.

OK, first of all, never trust a press-release, especially from the researcher's own college or university. No one in research is more self-aggrandizing than those offices are. (The researchers have to face their colleagues later, so tend to be more careful.) If they could get away with it, I'm sure that every press-release would claim a Nobel prize was pending for every discovery.

Second, is the discovery here just that Plato likes math? Because if so... duh? He didn't bury that in his writing, he was pretty clear about that. He loved abstract material. What he was contemptuous of, as I recall, was more "applied" disciplines, like what we'd now call Physics. (He liked Astronomy because it was like math and music. The fact that he made that distinction over Physics tells you how well he grasped how important math was in understanding Nature on Earth as well as in the sky.)

Also, in no way does say, "Hey, math is useful for understanding Nature!" predate Newton. That wasn't Newton's discovery. That wasn't any of his discoveries, in fact. Quite a few Greeks had the notion that mathematics was important to understanding Nature. Pythagoras comes to mind (in his own eccentric was). Heck, the quote about nature being written in mathematics isn't even from Newton, it's a paraphrasing of a well-known quote of Galileo's. (The significance of that distinction is this: Galileo recognized the importance, but he didn't invent Newtonian mechanics. Why? That math is helpful wasn't the important discovery.)

I'm not sure that's a fair distinction. He was executed for teaching the youth things that were disruptive to conventional beliefs. That's heresy.

Nietzche calls Plato decadent, and attributes to him everything we think Socrates said. For him, Plato was to blame for the Dark Ages, and the lack of intellectual advancement for a thousand years. A bit extreme... but a valid opinion.

It's extreme and also obtuse, and I'm reluctant to say that about someone like Nietzche. One man cannot possibly retard intellectual advancement for a thousand years except that legions of other men play follow-the-leader and imitate him like little robots instead of finding their own way. So let's say for argument's sake that Plato's contributions were entirely negative and unworthy (something I do not believe); Plato could only harm himself with that if people had any real self-hood. If they do not, this is not Plato's doing.

Just be happy the story is actually interesting news, and not just propaganda and/or flamebaiting...

What, you don't think George W. Bush is a reptilian?

As for Erich von Daniken, his theories are far more sound than the things that the majority of humanity believes. After all, he believes that alien astronauts came in ancient times and influenced human development, and that this explains religious writings, such as the Wheel of Ezekiel.

Compare this to a majority of Earth's population, who believe that various religious writings are actually real, and the work of an omnipotent, omniscient "god" (or gods), and that these gods have actually visited humans and still talk to them.

Which one is the "kook"? It seems pretty obvious to me that Erich's ideas, while fairly silly-sounding, are less fantastical than the things that most living humans believe.

If you don't buy Erich's ideas, what's your explanation for the Wheel of Ezekiel? The way I see it, there's three or four possibilities:
1) (which just about all Christians believe, comprising at least 1 billion people) that Ezekiel really was visited by God.
2) that Ezekiel was visited by an alien spacecraft.
3) that Ezekiel was piss-drunk, or on some drug and hallucinating
4) that Ezekiel was a shyster of some kind and was lying

Obviously, #3 and #4 are the most plausible, and would fit Occam's Razor the best. However, if you have to choose between #1 and #2, which one is more plausible? #2, easily. Spacecraft are unlikely, but not impossible, and much more likely and allowable by the laws of physics than #1. However, at least a billion people (including most of the USA) believe #1. So if you think von Daniken is a nutcase, what does that say about most Americans, just about all Latin Americans, many Europeans, most Jews, etc.?

The "code-cracking" seems relatively solid. For instance:

There is a literature, carefully reviewed by Balashov and briefly by Herz-Fischler, on the question of whether the Divided Line in the Republic was meant to be divided at the Golden Mean ... Surprisingly, the Republic's discussion of the Divided Line begins at 61.7 percent of the way through the text.[88] By itself, this could be a coincidence, but the other dialogues typically contain allusions to the Golden Mean near 61.8p.

A passage in the Parmenides at the location of the Golden Mean recalls Euclid's language:
Parmenides (61.7-61.8p): The One is equal and greater and less than itself ... And if greater and less and equal, it would be of equal measures and more and less than itself ... and in number less and more ...

The problem is... so what if there's a code? All it means is that Plato indulged in some sort of "numbers are nifty, math is mystical, knowledge is immortality" spirituality, possibly with some secret-society angles, codes, structure, blahblahblah. I'll believe that, and it's an interesting fact, but what does that have to do with the price of gas today? It's just fodder for a little more New Age gibberish, I'm sure.

> So lets see here, our oldest manuscript is over a thousand years old and we still think that we can accurately "decode" his code? Because everything was faithfully reproduced?

That's kind of the entire point of writing to begin with.

What I want to know is why so many people will quickly dismiss the writings of von Daniken as "crackpot" or whatever, but they never say anything about all the people who believe these religions.

Because Erik von Daniken's supporters don't number in the millions and carry guns.

Have you actually read Chariots of the Gods? A lot of what Von Daniken was claiming isn't even physically possible (ie. his UFO's parting the Red Sea crapola). Von Daniken was writing trash, and the chief difference between that and the Bible is that most of those selling Bible stories are at least sincere, whereas Von Daniken was one of the first major figures to take advantage of the credulity of the New Agers to sell them outrageous pap. I know that's a fairly subjective comparison, but really both sets of claims are pretty absurd. Von Daniken was about as interested in the laws of physics as the writers of the Pentateuch.

In some ways Von Daniken was even worse. He just went around looking at pictures of Mesoamerican, Egyptian and Babylonian art and writing and just invented his own narrative that had virtually nothing at all to do with the cultural art and motifs he was ripping off. He was like a lot of New Age types, who just crib together their own half-assed belief systems out of the spare parts of real cultures and civilizations, with little interest in the actual myths and rituals themselves. One can be reasonably sure that the Hebrews, Sumerians, Inca, Maya, Egyptians and so forth actually believed their fanciful stories about the world and their own origins, even if the accounts at times truly defy our knowledge of science and history. At least there is sincerity, but Von Daniken was cynically profiting from the gullible, and had about as much interest in science and history as a con-man running a pyramid scheme has in helping the people he fools turn a profit.

When reading the Phaedo, I can't help but believe I'm reading an eye witness account of the last hours of Socrates.

In all likelihood, you are! Like all eye-witness accounts, however, it is a recollection heavily coloured by the mind of the witness. One of my history professors once claimed that "when a source makes several recollections of an event over the years, it is either the very first or the very last, which is most interesting."

Now if memory serves me correctly, the Apology was the first of Plato's recollections over death of Socrates, the Phaedo (nearly?) the last. Putting to one side the question of which of these dialogues is the most interesting, one suspects the first provides us with the most faithful rendering of Socrates' own philosophy.

He was convicted of what amounts to "dangerous teachings" after one of his students, Critias, destroyed the democratic Athenean state and imposed a tyranny ... most say with the support of Socrates (including according to some sources Socrates himself).

Given that this was not his only student that tried to violently overthrow the city's government, one can certainly agree that his teachings certainly were dangerous, and that Socrates himself felt that he was entitled to rule as a tyrant over his fellow human beings, because he "understood the world". The prevalent view amongst Athene's orators and philosophers is that this failed violent takeover is what sealed his fate. Socrates had a reputation of being very open with his teachings, right up until the rise of the tyrants. In addition, he had a reputation for being very open with something else and the female population of Athens, which, I'm sure, did not play in his favor.

Of course, that sort of attitude is common amongst philosophers and too many other scientists even today. The childish "if everyone did what I say there would be world peace" feeling so prevalent amongst intelligentsia of all times ... which has failed every state that tried to apply it rather spectacularly.

However, apparently humans were strongly selected for this flaw, so there must be some so-far undiscovered advantage

It improves social cohesion and makes warriors less afraid to die. Pretty useful when society is at the tribal stage.