Slashdot Mirror
Science Historian Deciphers Plato's Code
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.
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.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Socrates, not Aristotle
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.
Dan Brown just came.
Socrates, ffs! Plato's teacher was Socrates!
Socrates --> Plato --> Aristotle
It's all Greek to me.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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.
Drink your Ovaltine.
You misunderstand. The errors are not really errors. They are part of the secret kdawson code.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I would like to say that I was one of those who said that there must be something more there when reading Plato, but this news has me stunned. If this holds true, it will be an epochal discovery. Me, I can't remember the last time we had one of those in philosophy. Just hope it won't turn out to be cold fusion.
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 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.
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.
isthay isway igpay Atinlay itchesbay!
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
Fortelling assassinations! (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.
but more unprovable https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorems
IBM doesn't play chess with the Universe.
How reputable a journal is Apeiron?
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Way to under-estimate the Scientoligist threat.
oh, so apparently now it's just fine to get your facts out of a 2,000-year-old book?
Next thing, you godless eggheads will want to be teaching this Plato in our nation's schools. You people won't stop until every first grader in America has sacrificed a goat to the Pythagorean principle.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
I love the quotes at the end. It seems little has changed in the day to day affairs of man.
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
“If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.”
“Ignorance: the root of all evil.”
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”
Give me a break-
It's well known and understood that Plato was a rationalist and believed that nature could be described with mathematics. There's no need for a "secret code" to show this. His epistemology was in fact the polar opposite of the empiricist movement behind the scientific revolution.
It's also no secret that Plato wasn't exactly a disciple of the Greek gods- and he was certainly in no danger in Greek society for hypothesizing that nature can be described with mathematics.
Oh- and Aristotle was a student of Plato. Not the other way around.
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.)
Given the 'musical' setup used in Plato's work (or so the researcher claims), couldn't it be that this was more of a style choice rather than a 'secret code'?
Considering the importance of music to Greek culture (which the author explains), it doesn't seem that odd to use the same methods (organization in 12ths) for essays just as in music.
Imagine an orchestra playing a musical piece. Now imagine a person making a speech. If the way a piece is organized creates a certain effect, shouldn't the same apply to a speech? (Opera...)
The writings could well have been a transcript of a speech or organized in a manner familiar to an orator as a style choice or as a tool.
As for the controversial thoughts? He had an academy, he was a very well-known teacher. I'd guess its pretty hard to teach someone when you're supposed to keep some pretty important things secret (things important enough to be written down in code).
This'll be interesting to look at in a few years.
What he was actually accused of most frequently gets translated into English as 'impiety.' There were multiple counts of impiety according to Plato's retelling. Some of these were inclusive of corruption of the youth but others involved introducing "strange new doctrines."
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.
here's the article...
http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/jay.kennedy/#Links_to_Papers_and_Files.
This is not the first time that writers have been accused of creating codes in their books. Let's assume that this is true, just for the sake of consideration. Given that assumption... what knowledge is being "hidden" now by authors that will come to light in the future, hidden now for fear of ostracization or somesuch?
This is the same dreck as "Bible Codes." I can't believe this got published in an academic journal.
"Code" implies that there is a literal message hidden or obscured in the text.
If the author is correct, what he has discovered is a technique Plato used to construct the analyzed writings.
To claim that "Plato anticipated the Scientific Revolution 2,000 years before Isaac Newton" based on this finding seems more than a little far-fetched.
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 codes don't show that Plato was out there making observations and doing experiments, than I don't care a bit what brand of rhetorical claptrap he was spouting, no more than I care about the differences between homoousios and homoiousios.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Naturally, old scriptures become less and less available by time.
A lot of the greek logic existed in the 8th to 10th century, books written by Plato's followers quoting his logic, building a whole school upon his logic, taking from other greek mathematicians too. Most of the sources that were available in the 8th - 10th century are lost by now.
The thing is, in this period, Arabs translated a lot of the greek logic, I'm not aware of direct translations available now, but reading a lot of these sources that discuss and debate greek knowledge in old Arabic books, I believe it's possible to establish a solid structure of the greek school of logic,
I'm not sure if this kind of research has been done, but I know that examining the greek literature through arabic literature is one strong link.
What do you suppose is in the Magna Carta and the US Constitution? Or all that L. Ron Hubbard stuff?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
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.
I suppose you could say kdawson is the Flash of /. editors. Ubiquitous, slow, and frustrating for many.
But not even Flash deserves that insult.
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?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Aristotle was Plato's student. Socrates was Plato's teacher.
If you delve further, you'll read his scathing review of the iPad.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mary Renault's excellent historical novel The Mask of Apollo 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.
-kgj
Cretin has nothing to do with Crete.
$META_SIG_JOKE
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've always wanted more discussion of philosophy on slahsdot... why did it have to be like this... *shakes head*
Page 147, paragraph 2:
z3u5 1s 73h 5uk
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I read the conclusions in the paper, but am still at a loss for exactly what information we have decoded. All I see are comments about a common syntax or structure between books. What is the new information that is derived from this structure? I suppose I should read the rest of the paper.
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:
#5: "the Wheel of Ezekiel" is fiction.
I vote for #5.
I don't respond to AC's.
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 religion worked in the first place. There was no such thing as heresy in the Olympian religion, because there was no dogma in the first place. For that matter, there was no concept of religion as we think of it.
Religion in ancient Greece was about action rather than belief. The closest thing we have to a phrase meaning religion is "sacre facere," which means "to do the sacred things," ie. sacrifice something and partake in the communal feast. This included matters such as religious festivals. What somebody believed was complete unimportant in ancient Athens - it was what they did that mattered.
Furthermore, there was no dogma - religious practices varied from cult to cult, and even the priesthood wasn't really organized. An ancient Greek priest was the guy who performed the sacrifice, and was a volunteer from the community. It wasn't his day job, there was no formal training, just a loose tradition that could be changed as circumstances required. The exception was the Elysian mysteries, of which even now little is known.
The actual impiety charge against Socrates was that he was "refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state and introducing other, new divinities." Now, the second one is interesting, as apparently, Socrates would talk to a "god" on his shoulder - hence, introducing a new divinity to the city. But refusing to recognize the gods was not a matter of him being persecuted for his beliefs (as noted, the ancient Greeks didn't care what somebody believed, only what they did), but for him forcing those beliefs on others in the Agora by accosting them and playing devil's advocate.
In fact, when you look at it (and the Apology by Plato), it seems that for the most part the impiety charge was part of Socrates having the book thrown at him for being a general nuisance that half of Athens wanted to get rid of.
If you want to know how ancient Greek religion actually worked, there's a very good book you can get here: http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Greek-Religion-Desktop-Editions/dp/140518177X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277777750&sr=1-1
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
People have been making this argument for decades, if not centuries. For an excellent presentation see Brisson and Meyerstein's amazing book "Inventing the universe: Plato's Timaeus, the big bang, and the problem of scientific knowledge" (1995).
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.
You will see patterns if you stare at anything long enough. Simple fact of man. Man sees design where there is none.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Seriously, why not study that if you're looking for secret codes? It's very likely there's some stuff that nobody has figured out in there. I know Dodgson isn't as influential as Plato by a long-shot but in terms of the information the writers provide, what Dodgson lacks in ahead-of-his-timeness he makes up for in being relatively recent. I'd say both are about as relevant (somewhere around the "kind of" mark..)
It was all booze and butt secz wit teh bois. Geez.
Truth is, Socrates was condemned because he smelled like ass. People have markets and shit to run, and they don't need some chatty hobo ambling in and encouraging teens to come in with their backpacks and steal all the shit that isn't nailed down.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Bill and Ted even took him to the future to try and save him. But, sure enough, when they book report was done, Socrates was all, "I need to get back to Athens because my stank is probably wearing off as we speak."
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
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.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Duh!
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Even Bill and Ted knew the difference between Aristotle and Socrates.
Yeah, Socrates they brought back and Aristotle they didn't.
You're dumber than Bill and Ted.
Hey now, I'm sure if kdawson had spent a few hours stuffed in a phone booth with Socrates, he'd know the difference too. Let's at least give him credit for that.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Plato they say could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day
The Religious leaders well knew the value of an education before the Renaissance. Particularly the Arabs, who had vast libraries. So did the Orthodox Greeks, at Constantinople. How do you think the Renaissance started in the first place?
It actually began by collecting copies of the the books in the Constantinople libraries, which were the only surviving copies of the ancient Greek Classics. In short, it all boiled down to literally a half dozen people over a relatively short period of time; copying them and sending them to Italy, where they were receptive to the works at the time. This is what gave birth to the Renaissance. Literally a half a dozen people are responsible for preserving these works. This is described in the book "Sailing from Byzantium", IIRC.
If you're talking about the population in general, then you might have a point. But keep in mind that it was the Printing Press which enabled books to be available to the common person. Before that, they were very expensive to produce.
These books, btw, formed the basis of an education well up to the early 1900's. If you studied Math, for example, you started out studying the same books that had been used for 2000 years.
One other key point that the author made was that periods of study and knowledge throughout history typically last about 300 years, regardless of the civilization. Considering our own period can be said to have started in the 1700's (with the Enlightenment), we may well be approaching the end of our learned society. That's something to keep in mind with all of the talk about the End of Empire for the U.S., and then end of cheap energy.
No, my are an idiot.
"Your are an idiot"
I can tell you want kdawson's job.
All ancient texts have variants because they were hand-copied. Heck, all documents up until very recently have variants.
Now, that is not the same as saying "we have no idea what Plato said." We do. But if you are going to extract a code, you better have a standard text. If you are pulling out letters at some equal distance (or something along those lines), you won't be able to get a consistent message with textual variants.
I'm not a classical Greek person, but I would assume there are some words that could be spelled in different ways and appear that way in the text. There may even be changes in word order that doesn't change the overall meaning of straightforward meaning but would change this.
Anyway, I'm really skeptical about this. Furthermore, it's been a while since I took my Ancient Greek Philosophy class in college, but I seem to remember that there were the equivalent of materialists in Ancient Greek philosophy. As the Bible says, there is nothing new under the Sun. I'm not so sure that Plato would feel the need to hide this view from public knowledge.
What is more interesting is that Plato extols man-young boy love relationships. Once Plato got popular within the Catholic Church, people began to ask "hey what's going on here?" "That doesn't mean what you think it means." Hence, the term "platonic relationship."
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
"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.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
All these years cracking this code, he's done it, and he hasn't tried to put it all together to see if the hidden code makes any readible sense? I tried do it out of the annoated pdf download of Socrates' Symposium speech from Jay Kennedy's website but my ancient greek is a little rusty and my translation was nonsensical. All I got was:
"help me are student here time machine mishap kernel panic in quantum fluctuation regulator module stupid arduino fail experiement sent back too far wanted woodstock not greek ancient time fml please send spare flux capacitor from 2013"
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Let's assume you can only be executed once before further attempts are irrelevant. I would argue that you can only be executed for a single crime, and the one being executed gets to pick which crime's ultimate penalty will be applied first. I say the executioner(s) forfeit the right to select when they claim to apply a set of mutually exclusive punishments. Not a whole lot of comfort if you die, but if you insist hard during your death it might at least irritate them or even cause reform in how such punishment is applied. (ex: torture then death, not the other way around)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
(Riffing off an earlier post)
I have analyzed the entire collected works of Kdawson editorials, looking for patterns. Then, as a control sample I analyzed the editorial summaries of the other editors. I find that the errors in Kdawson suddenly become very very round.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
So when is the movie coming out?
Unfortunately, that mantle has already been taken: Muphry's Law, which states that any proofreading or editing comment will contain a proofing or editing mistake of some kind.
No doubt this post will come out with some HTML fuckup, but I expect that.
xkcdsw: the unofficial archive of Making xkcd Slightly Worse
Side-by-side comparisons of passages at the same relative locations shows that concepts with neg- ative valuations within the dialogues, like disease, dishonesty, Hades, the body, difference, and negation, tend to cluster in definite ranges and at a definite locations, such as around and between the points ten and eleven twelfths of the way through the dialogues. Similarly, positive concepts, like the forms, virtue, the gods, goodness, justice, and the soul, tend to occur in distinct and equally definite ranges. These tendencies are never absolute, but the mixture of concepts in these ranges is clearly dominated either by more negative or by more positive concepts,
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
A friend of Socrates!
Heh. Here's all you need to know about Jews.
Technically, it isn't published out of UT Austin. All the business matters related to the publishing happens at Academic Printing and Publishing like you say. If you want to subscribe or order back issues, you go there.
It is the editorial office that is hosted by UT Austin. If you want to submit a paper, you contact UT. UT arranges for the peer review, etc. The executive editor is R.J. Hankinson of UT Austin. If you don't know who that is, search Google.
Dear Sir, surely, you are not implying that kdawson is by any and all metrics known to man the worst /. editor ever? This is a dire assault on this fine gentleman's unique, if somewhat feeble, intellect!
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.
The latter half is already known as Muphry's Law [sic], actually.
Also, naming things after yourself is a little vain, isn't it? Come up with things and leave it to others to decide whether you've really done something so new and interesting that these things should be named after you.
And the secret message was his mom's recipe for moussaka, innit peeps and everbod.
Has there been a full decryption of Plato's work? Or are these results preliminary?
Where has reason in the world gone? Have we abandoned it in favor of power and politics?
Kdawson, your are an idiot
The irony, I love it.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
From the press release you'd think that Plato was a champion of freedom and human rights. It would be more accurate to describe him as a proto-fascist pederast. Popper has argued as much in The open society and its enemies Vol 1: The spell of Plato, but apparently this guy didn't get the memo..
A Plato quote from that book:
`The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male or female, should be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative, neither out of zeal, nor even playfully. [..]
And even in the smallest matter he should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals [..] only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently, and to become utterly incapable of it.'
Also see wikipedia:
"According to this model, the principles of Athenian democracy (as it existed in his day) are rejected as only a few are fit to rule."
"He argues that it is better to be ruled by a bad tyrant, than be a bad democracy"
can't wait to hear what it says, maybe it will be a recipe for building a small cold fusion reactor, or some goody like that???
I'm not sure if you're confused and don't realise that Sappho was a Lesbian because she lived on the island of Lesbos, or the (prostitute?) in brackets is supposed to be clever, but no. Come off it. She was an educated woman who wrote about romantic love. The author of the famous invocation to Hesperus was an aristocrat living in an aristocratic society. You have to remember that each Greek city state had its own culture. I think you may be confusing Lesbos with Athens, which had a positively Arabic attitude to women, but had a class of independent semi-aristocratic women called hetairae who had powerful male protectors. Calling them "prostitutes" is a major cultural misunderstanding; Athens had its street prostitutes (as Aristophanes notes in The Wasps) but they were from a totally different class. And Mytilene wasn't Athens.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
"Kdawson, your are an idiot." - I hereby proclaim this to be Anonymous Coward's law.
Then again, I think this might be too common knowledge to be proclaimed a new law.
That was some really interesting stuff, and evidence of some effort on your part. I regret that I can't shovel karma in your direction by modding your posts upwards (well, if they weren't already maxed). :D
Seriously. Re-evaluate your life, dude. You're doing it wrong. -fixed
"The laws of science be a harsh mistress." --Bender
Perhaps you should learn a little bit more about higher criticism and current scholarship on the history of the bible. The most probable explanation is one which you do not even consider. It is entirely possible that Ezekiel (if such a person really existed) did not purport to have the vision you described, but it was invented by later scribes and added to the book of Ezekiel. Or the whole book of Ezekiel is an invention by a scribe, and the Ezekiel described as the author of the book never even existed.
Therefore Plato was, in fact, Francis Bacon.
I hereby proclaim this to be Sasayaki's law.
Sorry, but Muphry already took it.
Instead, Sasayaki's law could refer to incidences where one names a law after oneself only to find that it already has a name.
there is no god but truth, and reality is its prophet
awesome. very insightful
he who controls the spice controls the universe
His website: http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/jay.kennedy
Here's the argument, as far as I can tell.
1. Plato's dialogues contain certain patterns.
2. These patterns could only have been put there intentionally.
3. These patterns show Plato was a Pythagorean.
4. Therefore Plato was many centuries ahead of his time.
Regarding the premise (1), sure, everything sufficiently complex will contain lots of patterns. The late Martin Gardner has written some articles about common statistical fallacies that may be relevant here (some are in Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus IIRC). The more data there is to sift through, the more likely one can find a certain complex pattern. He's mostly looking at the lengths and locations of certain sections, within sizeable bodies of text, so it's no surprise he came across certain patterns, especially lengths in fractions of 12, and appearances of "positive" or "negative" issues (e.g., beauty or disease). The existence of the patterns does not support (2), even though some examples have been found that fit the author's specifications fairly precisely. It would take deliberate work to avoid producing any such patterns in long written works (like the Symposium, one of Plato's longest dialogues, which is one of the author's targets), so the patterns hardly show intention. (I'm simply granting the author's premises about the correct way to represent the dialogues, whose exact contents are not entirely known, due to transcription errors, small gaps, etc.)
Nor does (2) support (3). Pythagoreanism was a cult combining mysticism, mathematics, and music, and Pythagoreans worked out the "circle of fifths" from which we get the common 12-note musical scale, and some other very basic Western music theory. We know independently that Plato was influenced by Pythagoreans. But Plato's writing something that happens to contain a few 12-based patterns hardly constitutes an allusion to, let alone an endorsement of, Pythagoreanism or any principle of it. And the author's calling the collections of issues that come up at these intervals "harmonic" or "disharmonic" (rather than, e.g. "relevant", "contrary", or any other way we might connect the given pairs or triples of issues the author mentions in the paper) hardly shows any musical allusion on Plato's part.
Finally, (3) does not support (4), the sexiest claim mentioned in the summary and press release (and on the author's website). If it did, we could just as well say the Pythagoreans anticipated the scientific revolution, etc. Well, in a nearly empty sense they did, just like Democritus anticipated early 20th-century atomic physics (although the former "anticipation" is more vague and tenuous). Some people thousands of years ago said a few things that turned out to be more or less right. This does not show they knew things not widely known until much later, because they lacked sufficient justification for their beliefs. If you speculate enough, as early scientist/philosophers tended to do, you will occasionally get something right. Big whoop.
So as far as I can tell, this paper (and the other writings available on his website) contains a terrible argument for an obviously false conclusion. (Disclaimer: although I'm a philosopher, I'm not an expert on Plato or any other ancients.)
When you don't have the genetic ability to ignore reality you will try anything.