Science Historian Deciphers Plato's Code 402
Reader eldavojohn tips the news of a researcher in the UK, Jay Kennedy, who has uncovered a hidden code in the writings of Plato. From the University of Manchester press release: "[Dr. Kennedy said] 'I have shown rigorously that the books do contain codes and symbols and that unraveling them reveals the hidden philosophy of Plato. This is a true discovery, not simply reinterpretation.' ... The hidden codes show that Plato anticipated the Scientific Revolution 2,000 years before Isaac Newton, discovering its most important idea — the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics. ... Plato did not design his secret patterns purely for pleasure — it was for his own safety. Plato's ideas were a dangerous threat to Greek religion. He said that mathematical laws and not the gods controlled the universe. Plato's own teacher [Socrates] had been executed for heresy. Secrecy was normal in ancient times, especially for esoteric and religious knowledge, but for Plato it was a matter of life and death." Here is the paper (PDF), which was published in the journal Apeiron: A Journal of Ancient Philosophy and Science.
Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:5, Informative)
Aristotle was a student of Plato, and lived a long life that didn't end in execution. Socrates was the teacher of Plato who drank Hemlock after being sentenced to death the by the Athenians.
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At least Aristotle was banned from Athens and died shortly after the ban in exile in Chalkis (Euboia).
Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:5, Funny)
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*checks*
kdawson....\sigh
Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:4, Interesting)
I came here to make the same correction. What lowbrow editor posted this summary with such an ass-backwards statement in it?
What is worse is that the majority of the submission is copy and paste. All except the "[Aristotle]" inclusion.
So the ONE THING that was added (apart from a couple of links in sentences circumfixing the quote) is wrong.
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Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:4, Insightful)
Just be happy the story is actually interesting news, and not just propaganda and/or flamebaiting...
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You expect any less?
Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, as if it weren't wrong enough already, Socrates was not executed for heresy but for corruption of youth.
Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:5, Funny)
"Think of the children" obviously already worked back then.
Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:4, Informative)
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It wasn't quite that reasonable, since there had been granted an amnesty for the crimes Socrates were really accused of. Therefore the charge was the more nebulous "corrupting the youth" rather than "getting cozy with Critias" - which he probably was guilty of.
In his defense, he boasted that he had ignored orders to round up the tyrant's political enemies - which may be noble in itself, possibly, unless it was just to avoid getting his hands dirty - but the fact that Critias and the tyrants were comfortable
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This is Athenians we're talking about, they "thought of the children" quite often. Lithe, athletic children.
Actually, heresy is a better description (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
He was executed for time travel (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't you ever watch Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure? Everyone knows the Greeks were jacked when they saw Socrates go into a phone booth, disappear and then reappear. Worse, when he came back, he kept trying to tell the Greeks to "be excellent to each other". Unconventional beliefs, indeed.
The final straw came when the Greeks repeatedly insisted there is only one time traveling phone booth, and it belongs to The Doctor. Socrates said, "Nu-huh!" Heresy, indeed.
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What's even worse, the circumstances of his death weren't just for corruption of youth, but also for his lack of remorse for his "crimes". In Athenian law, the condemned is permitted to suggest an alternative sentence - exile, imprisonment, a fine - Socrates suggested he pay about the equivalent of $5. The tribunal then voted on whether or not to sentence the condemned to death or this other sentence. He was sentenced to death by a larger margin than he was convicted :).
Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:4, Interesting)
Socrates was "executed" for several crimes -- including heresy.
An argument can be made that Socrates caused himself to be sentenced to death by pissing off his jury -- essentially insulting them by saying his punishment should be to have himself, wife and kids should be taken care of for the rest of their lives. After pissing them off, his friends basically said "NONONO! He'll pay a fine! We'll cover it!" The prosecution offered death. The "jury" picked death.
Further, can it REALLY be called an "execution"? The Athenians' bent over backwards to let him escape. He refused. When the day came, he happily drank the poison -- even offering a bit to gods before drinking. I'd say it was more of voluntary martyrdom...
Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:5, Informative)
Socrates never existed at all. He was a fictional character used as a tool to propose ideas.
Plato is not the sole reference to Socrates. Xenophon, who would have been around 30 at the putative time of Socrates' death similarly "preserved" Socratic ideas in a series of dialogues.
Plato's works are all Plato's ideas.
It's true that we can't safely distinguish the two. However the ideas, and indeed the character of Socrates portrayed in Plato's Apology, differs markedly from those in later works such as The Republic. It seems that Plato began by trying to keep alive the memory of his mentor, but ended by using him as a mere vehicle for his own ideas.
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When reading the Phaedo, I can't help but believe I'm reading an eye witness account of the last hours of Socrates. And the Phaedo isn't considered one of his earlier works.
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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 Plat
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Plato is not the sole reference to Socrates. Xenophon, who would have been around 30 at the putative time of Socrates' death similarly "preserved" Socratic ideas in a series of dialogues.
Not to mention Aristophanes; and also sources that are relatively later but derive from independent material, like the Aristophanes scholia, Aristoxenus, Pausanias, Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry, ...
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WTF do you think they meant by "corruption of youth"? his teaching of "heresy" was the so-called corruption.
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And besides, the idea that "the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics" was hardly original to Plato, nor to modern science, it was a pretty widespread belief among the pythagoreans. I would have read the article if it wasn't for the idiotic sensationalism.
Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:4, Funny)
Socrates was the teacher of Plato who drank Hemlock after being sentenced to death the by the Athenians.
"I drank what?"
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In addition, it is not entirely clear that Socrates was executed for hearsay. If anything, he was executed for challenging the social order. Part of that order were religious powers in Athens, but it was as much the political power he challenged as anything.
I hope these oversimplifications were made by the submitter and not the author of this paper. Otherwise, I'd take a healthy dose of salt with anything the guy said. Not knowing your basic Plato is not good for someone trying to unravel the greater my
Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:5, Funny)
Not "morons", it's "cretins", you cynic.
Cretin != Cretan (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cretin != Cretan (Score:5, Informative)
Your link is to a subscription service. More accessible (though not as impressive) is the dictionary.com definition:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cretin [reference.com]
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If you'd seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, you'd know that Plato and Socrates were real. Sheesh. :)
Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:5, Funny)
Aristotle was a student of Plato
Wait a minute, those people were real?
Even more, they were rational!
Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:4, Funny)
"Well, Socrates was executed for being a radical."
Socrates was not executed, you cretin: he suicided.
Of course, the difference is transcendental.
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But are they whole?
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Re:Socrates, not Aristotle (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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"And Sappho the Lesbian (prostitute?)"
From Lesbos Island moreso.
what the fuck? (Score:3)
Plato was always talking about mathematics being the language of God, mathematics explaining the heavens, mathematics being central to philosophy, etc. What he got wrong was assuming that something seductively appealing and simple from a mathematical PoV should be assumed to explain the world, rather than actually incorporating empirical evidence to test his models. Whence the Platonic model of the planets, etc.
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The "code-cracking" seems relatively solid. For instance:
Dan Brown just came. (Score:4, Funny)
Dan Brown just came.
Re:Dan Brown just came. (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, right, because the first thing he is worried about is having some basis in reality.
Re:Dan Brown just came. (Score:4, Funny)
Turns out the poor guy was trying to give his wallet back.
Hmmm (Score:2, Funny)
It's all Greek to me.
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tg;dr?
Riiiiight (Score:5, Informative)
According to Wikipedia
The oldest surviving manuscript for about half of Plato's dialogues is the Clarke Plato (MS. E. D. Clarke 39), which was written in Constantinople in 895 and acquired by the Oxford University in 1809
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? Lets see here, some books of the Old Testament of the Bible were written in later than 500 BC and the dead sea scrolls date from around 150 BC - 70 AD depending on who you ask, making the Dead Sea Scrolls a more faithful reproduction more likely than our copies of Plato's writings.
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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.
Re:Riiiiight (Score:4, Insightful)
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.?
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Much of the USA believes that everything in the Bible is literally true. It doesn't matter if they're not intimately familiar with everything in it; they believe it all.
Some of the USA. Not most.
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Pretty close to most. I've read estimates that place evangelicals at around 40% of the population, maybe a little less. That's just evangelicals; another 25-40% consists of other religions, though not fundamentalist. While non-fundamentalist Protestants may not believe the earth is 6500 years old, and may believe the Adam and Eve story is allegory, I'm pretty sure they believe most of the other crazy things, such as God appearing as a burning bush.
Again, which is more plausible? God appears as a burning
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There's really equal evidence for 1 and 2 - none (but neither has been proven impossible). Really, there's no scientific basis right now to believe there's any way for human-like creatures to travel interstellar distances. I don't think that changes your core idea, but it really weakens your argument to prefer fiction that one group of people enjoy over fiction that another group of people enjoy.
Re:Riiiiight (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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So many crackpots, so little time. The OP never said he was OK with religous myths, so how about you concentrate on your pet crackpots and let the OP concentrate on his?
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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.
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The difference is that the Bible Code was all about "by twiddling this code we arrive at predictions about the future!!!" where as this was more "Plato's works are structured in twelfths; it sounds like he was one of those Pythagorean-Secret-Society types who conflated religion and math."
No doubt this will be fodder for more "ooh secret-society" drama and such anyway.
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Re:Riiiiight (Score:5, Informative)
You know how I know you didn't read the paper?
First off, because the author (Kennedy) doesn't ever talk about decoding anything.
The author uses previous research into Platonic line length to arrive at 35 characters per line on average, and then he uses this line length as a metric into which to divide up the dialogues. So far he's very safe.
He finds that numbers of lines in dialogues suddenly become very, very round and that the works can be broken apart easily, usually into twelfths. That's his first conclusion. The only major problem here is that he doesn't show his data but keeps pointing to "works in progress," which undermines his credibility somewhat, but not fatally. If what he publishes later bears all this out, he's golden.
Later on, he uses spurious works attributed falsely to Plato as a control group to see whether or not the roundness of lines and the twelve-fold structure is valid, and he finds that the control group, in which he didn't expect to find the same characteristics as the experimental, indeed does not conform to the same principles. So far, so good.
Kennedy looks at the twelve part structure and determines that ideas or shifts of tone seem to follow a progression strongly correlated to what we understand of ancient musical theory, which makes a lot of sense given that Plato knew some of this (Plato mentions Damon of Athens, a math/music theorist, repeatedly). Basically, he's connected a lot of dots that classicists already had in front of them but hadn't assembled yet.
I have no clue where the fuck the Slashdot summary came from, but it's horribly, horribly wrong both in terms of summarizing the research and in terms of general history (Aristotle as Plato's teacher?).
As for the age of the manuscripts—the whole point of the exercise is to work on larger chunks of ideas, not on individual characters like in those BS "Bible Code" shenanigans. While the exact character for character accuracy of ancient texts is a problem at times and for some texts (we call that textual criticism), it's not such a big deal for Plato, and it's definitely trivial when working at the scale of ideas and moods rather than individual characters.
Re:Riiiiight (Score:5, Informative)
The author uses previous research into Platonic line length to arrive at 35 characters per line on average, and then he uses this line length as a metric into which to divide up the dialogues. So far he's very safe.
He finds that numbers of lines in dialogues suddenly become very, very round and that the works can be broken apart easily, usually into twelfths. That's his first conclusion. The only major problem here is that he doesn't show his data but keeps pointing to "works in progress," which undermines his credibility somewhat, but not fatally.
I have just now attempted to check the accuracy of the article's counts. They're not staggeringly good.
I have taken the TLG text of the Symposium, stripped everything but letters of the Greek alphabet, divided it into 35-character chunks (not finished yet, since I'm having to do it manually; Unicode Greek causes serious hiccups in automated search-and-replaces done with regular expressions).
Kennedy claims that in the Symposium "Pausanias’ speech is aligned with the point two-twelfths of the way through the dialogue," which according to Kennedy is 2400 lines long. Based on that, Pausanias' speech should start very close to line 400. In fact it starts at line 377, an error of -23 lines. Not miles off, but hardly exact enough to be very striking. Eryximachos' speech is supposed to start at the three-twelfths point, i.e. line 600; in fact it starts at line 619, i.e. an error of +19 lines.
If we're allowed to have errors ranging from -23 to +19 in 200-line chunks, there's really no argument to be based on precision. Colour me unimpressed.
Re:Riiiiight (Score:5, Informative)
Addendum: I've now divided the Symposium into 35-character lines. This dialogue, which Kennedy talks about on pages 7-8, 10-11, 14-15, and 17-18, works out as follows. I offer no interpretation of the differences between Kennedy's claims and the actual figures, except to acknowledge a very approximate correlation.
Total length of dialogue
Pausanias' speech
Eryximachos' speech
Aristophanes' speech
Agathon's speech
Socrates' speech
Alcibiades' speech
Re:Riiiiight (Score:4, Informative)
Addendum to the addendum: those interested in verifying my results may find it useful to have the Symposium chunked into 35-character lines. plain text [google.com]; ODT version [google.com]; PDF version [google.com].
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> 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.
Aristotle? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Kdawson, your are an idiot. You're dumber than a pack of matches. I've had cats smarter than you. My cats have had hairballs that are smarter than you.
Even Bill and Ted knew the difference between Aristotle and Socrates. You're dumber than Bill and Ted.
Seriously. Re-evaluate your life, dude. You're doing the wrong thing.
Re:Aristotle? Really? (Score:5, Funny)
You misunderstand. The errors are not really errors. They are part of the secret kdawson code.
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I suppose you could say kdawson is the Flash of /. editors. Ubiquitous, slow, and frustrating for many.
But not even Flash deserves that insult.
Re:Aristotle? Really? (Score:5, Funny)
"Kdawson, your are an idiot." - I hereby proclaim this to be Sasayaki's law. When insulting someone on the internet, it is likely you will make some horrible spelling or grammar error which results in everyone laughing at you. If you are picking on someone for their own spelling or grammar, the probability of this approaches 1.
This sentance is designated to proof this rule.
Completely misses the "News for Nerds" bit (Score:5, Interesting)
The summary and press release it links to both completely miss the part where this is "News for Nerds". This paper is apparently the first time Plato's writings have been stichometrically [wikipedia.org] analyzed by computer. Somehow, people have managed to miss him while analyzing other works. Apparently, it was commonplace back then to arrange parts of your work according various mathematical structures, though honestly I'm not sure how you get from that to this press release; I'll have to finish the paper to see if it is reasonable.
Seriously though, RTFP. It's not written very densely at all.
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I'll have to finish the paper to see if it is reasonable.
It sure doesn't look that way to me. Certainly not enough to justify the self-aggrandizement in the press release. It's not so much a "code" as a structure. It's not steganography.
It may reveal some details of how Plato himself thought of things, but it's not really any sort philosophical revelation. (From a scientist's point of view, philosophers have an odd fascination with the original sources, of which descendants are treated as degraded versions rather than improvements. Nobody would think to look
Mention of Aristotle isn't in press release (Score:2)
It would appear that the mention of Aristotle was added by the slashdot editor...who might want to rethink their position given the level of incompetence displayed herein.
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> ...who might want to rethink their position given the level of incompetence
> displayed herein
At Slashdot that sort of thing qualifies one for a promotion (not that this sets /. apart from the media in general...)
Well, let's not forget the Moby Dick code! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, in any given cirumstance I'd be extremely skeptical of this stuff. But in this case we don't really know whether all of "Plato's" writings were actually written by Plato, and certainly not if they're verbatim. Given that ancient Greek had five grammatical cases, it didn't have very strict word order (much like Latin). So it's even less of a coincidence if someone manages to string the words together into comprehensible sentences.
I doubt this will be the revolution Dr Kennedy thinks it will be. It'd be interesting to hear what others have to say. But of course, this is a press release, not a real article.
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Fortelling assassinations! [anu.edu.au] (This originally being a refutal of Drosnin's "Bible Code" nonsense)
Seriously, in any given cirumstance I'd be extremely skeptical of this stuff. But in this case we don't really know whether all of "Plato's" writings were actually written by Plato, and certainly not if they're verbatim.
Given that ancient Greek had five grammatical cases, it didn't have very strict word order (much like Latin). So it's even less of a coincidence if someone manages to string the words together into comprehensible sentences.
I doubt this will be the revolution Dr Kennedy thinks it will be. It'd be interesting to hear what others have to say. But of course, this is a press release, not a real article.
Dr. Kennedy wants publicity, but nowhere in his paper does he even begin to describe a code. All he does is point out that Plato, like most of his contemporaries, mixed rhythm and narrative structure. There's no hidden message, there's simply a supposed emphasis put on certain already well studied sections. No, magical-thinker Plato didn't invent science.
Philosophy graduates/phds in the house? (Score:3, Informative)
How reputable a journal is Apeiron?
Depends on which Apeiron (Score:4, Informative)
That said, his thesis doesn't sound all that far fetched to me. A large number of interpreters of Plato through the ages have argued for a "hidden" doctrine. And Plato's emphasis on mathematics is unquestioned. He would not accept anyone into his school that did not already have a good grasp of mathematics. The real question is whether Kennedy is just picking up noise or has found a legitimate code.
I'm a bit doubtful mostly because we know next to nothing about what ancient Greek music. There are various reconstructions, but it's all highly speculative.
Re:Philosophy graduates/phds in the house? (Score:5, Informative)
Watch your step there, friend! There are apparently two journals with that name, quite different from one another.
The traditional academic journal, apparently out of UT Austin's philosophy department: Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science [utexas.edu]
Then the online journal: Apeiron, Studies in Infinite Nature [vif.com].
This paper was published in the UT academic journal, not the (somewhat questionable looking) online journal.
Beyond that, I have no experience with the UT publication or its track record.
Smells like Hype (Score:3, Insightful)
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.)
A really full load of cobblers (Score:2)
Er, if you actually try to go read TFA, it seems they analyze the text by semi-numerological means.
Like noticing that one particular argument is about 1/12th the length of the chapter, from that somehow drawing some far-fetched conclusion.
Sounds like a particularly bizarre form of BS to me.
No, that was NOT the important idea. (Score:2)
No, the most important idea in the Scientific Revolution was NOT "the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics."
The important idea was to get off your butt and do stuff. As it says in the library of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, "Study nature, not books." Point telescopes at Jupiter. Dissect sea urchins. Scrap off the crud between filthy teeth and put it under a microscope. Test your theories against nature, not against scholastic debates with other scholars.
If the secret c
Code or die (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the Renaissance was when a sea change in the attitude towards learning began to take hold. Before that, was pretty routine for leaders, especially those whose power rested on religious beliefs, to regard much of education, exploration, and discovery as a waste of time, if not outright subversion. Guilds and other clubs of that sort treated knowledge as proprietary secrets and weren't above murder to preserve those secrets.
So, yes, Plato would have had to hide certain things, or leave them unsaid. The execution of Socrates was certainly a powerful example and motivation.
Why the steganography, though? Why not write it down plainly, and hide the manuscript?
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I am curious to see the actual analysis. If its based on *concepts* and not words, then I can see how that could be hidden in the text and make it's way through multiple translations and copies. If it's based solely on matching word order, that's a bit more difficult for me to swallow.
Plato in "The Mask of Apollo" (Score:5, Interesting)
Mary Renault's excellent historical novel The Mask of Apollo [wikipedia.org] is a masterful portrait of -- among other things -- Plato and his world. Engaging, informative, and moving: highly recommended.
We commonly think of Plato as a philosopher, and philosophers as unworldly; but Renault reminds us that Plato was also a soldier, a statesman, a man who repeatedly put his life on the line, for his friends and for his ideals, in the face of deadly opposition.
All-Righty Then (Score:2)
So much for feeling inferior about State U and not having a British Education.
Aristotle, notwithstanding, I'd really like the code to be true so I suppose I should read on.
I see it now (Score:2)
Page 147, paragraph 2:
z3u5 1s 73h 5uk
Ancient Greek religion did not work that way! (Score:2)
Oh, the things that are wrong with these sentences:
"Plato's ideas were a dangerous threat to Greek religion. He said that mathematical laws and not the gods controlled the universe. Plato's own teacher [Aristotle] had been executed for heresy. Secrecy was normal in ancient times, especially for esoteric and religious knowledge, but for Plato it was a matter of life and death."
Okay, I spent most of May and June TAing a course on Greek and Roman Myth and religion - and this really misrepresents how Greek reli
Tempest in a teapot (Score:2)
I have (quickly) read the paper. The author does a stichometric analysis and concludes that there is a mathematical structure in the texts (which seems reasonably solid) and that (as Aristotle said), Plato was thus a Pythagorean (they were big on numerical mysticism). I would regard that as a "definite maybe." And that's pretty much it. To go from that to that he "anticipated the Scientific Revolution 2,000 years before Isaac Newton" is, IMHO, a stretch.
If you stare long enough at anything (Score:2)
Re:Good article (Score:4, Informative)
>It seems little has changed in the day to day affairs of man.
Not only has it not changed much in 2,400 years, if you read about ancient Mesopotamia, you will find that not much has changed in 5,000 years
Re:Good article (Score:4, Interesting)
Our brains are the same size and of the same stuff as humans 5000 years ago, so it goes to follow that our philosophical and social habits haven't changed at all. But now, there are 6 billion of us.
Which goes to show, we're really no different from any other living organism. Despite all of the posturing by society to make it sound as if we're somehow more "civilized" now than ever before, the only thing we've actually succeeded in doing is scale up our old behaviors.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It improves social cohesion and makes warriors less afraid to die. Pretty useful when society is at the tribal stage.
Re: (Score:2)