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Science Historian Deciphers Plato's Code

Posted by kdawson on from the rewriting-the-foundations-of-western-civ dept.

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.

44 of 402 comments (clear)

  1. Socrates, not Aristotle by jjohnson · · Score: 4, 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.

    --
    Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
    1. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Morons.

      Not "morons", it's "cretins", you cynic.

    2. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 4, Informative

      Furthermore, as if it weren't wrong enough already, Socrates was not executed for heresy but for corruption of youth.

    3. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Think of the children" obviously already worked back then.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    4. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

      Aristotle was a student of Plato

      Wait a minute, those people were real?

      Even more, they were rational!

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    5. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by nine-times · · Score: 3, 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.

    6. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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 :).

    7. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by Tumbleweed · · Score: 3, Funny

      Socrates was the teacher of Plato who drank Hemlock after being sentenced to death the by the Athenians.

      "I drank what?"

    8. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by cheesybagel · · Score: 3, Informative

      You are probably joking, but some of his pupils were some particularly nasty, infamous bloodthirsty tyrants. When Athenian democracy was restored people associated with the tyrants were purged, as per custom.

    9. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by causality · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    10. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by gilleain · · Score: 3, 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.

    11. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by Jhon · · Score: 3, 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...

    12. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by X0563511 · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    13. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by Big_Monkey_Bird · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well, Socrates was executed for being a radical.

    14. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by turbidostato · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Well, Socrates was executed for being a radical."

      Socrates was not executed, you cretin: he suicided.

      Of course, the difference is transcendental.

    15. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by Capsaicin · · 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.

      --
      Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
    16. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by SlappyBastard · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, Aristotle was exiled to Mexico and was assassinated by Spanish Communist with an ice axe. Shit, doesn't anyone check facts any more? What is this shit? Uncyclopedia?

      --
      I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
    17. Re:Socrates, not Aristotle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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, ...

  2. Dan Brown just came. by MessedRocker · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dan Brown just came.

    1. Re:Dan Brown just came. by maxume · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, right, because the first thing he is worried about is having some basis in reality.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    2. Re:Dan Brown just came. by gijoel · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well in an eerie parrellel to Dan Brown's novel, the scientist only made this discovery after being chased around Athens by an Albino.

      Turns out the poor guy was trying to give his wallet back.

  3. Riiiiight by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Right, and Dan Brown is always right in his books.

    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.
    1. Re:Riiiiight by Grishnakh · · 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.?

    2. Re:Riiiiight by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

    3. Re:Riiiiight by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

    4. Re:Riiiiight by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, 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.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    5. Re:Riiiiight by Anonymous Coward · · 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

      • Kennedy's claim (p. 10): 2400 lines.
      • Actual: 2375 lines plus 2 characters (error: -25 lines).

      Pausanias' speech

      • Kennedy's claim (p. 7): begins at line 400, lasts 200 lines.
      • Actual: begins at 377 (-23), ends at 599, i.e. lasts 222 lines (+22).

      Eryximachos' speech

      • Kennedy's claim (p. 7): begins at line 600, lasts 200 lines ("including the repartee over Aristophanes' hiccups": cherry-picking?).
      • Actual: speech extends 619-758 (139 lines); repartee extends 599-778, i.e. 179 lines (-21).

      Aristophanes' speech

      • Kennedy's claim (pp. 7-8): begins at line 800.
      • Actual: begins at 778 (-22).

      Agathon's speech

      • Kennedy's claim (p. 8): ends at line 1200.
      • Actual: ends at 1180 (-20).

      Socrates' speech

      • Kennedy's claim (p. 8): lasts 600 lines "including his conversations with Agathon and Diotima".
      • Actual: extends lines 1180-1833, i.e. 653 lines (+53).

      Alcibiades' speech

      • Kennedy's claim (p. 8): lasts 400 lines.
      • Actual: extends lines 1955-2302, i.e. 347 lines (-53).
    6. Re:Riiiiight by Anonymous Coward · · 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; ODT version; PDF version.

  4. Aristotle? Really? by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  5. Re:Aristotle? Really? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  6. Completely misses the "News for Nerds" bit by IICV · · 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 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.

    1. Re:Completely misses the "News for Nerds" bit by sous_rature · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As a historian of science myself, alarm bells went off immediately at the `anticipated the Scientific Revolution' line. The actual claim in the paper was the Plato was a Pythagorean, not that he had secretly already achieved the chief scientific insights of the 17th century. Sounds a lot more sensible in that light, and I don't know what to make of the thought that the paper needed to be dressed up with the sort of claim few serious historians would make. Kennedy's "non-expert" description on his Manchester webpage does a nice job of explaining why his finding is interesting without resorting to such tactics.

  7. Well, let's not forget the Moby Dick code! by MoellerPlesset2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  8. Philosophy graduates/phds in the house? by ThorGod · · Score: 3, Informative

    How reputable a journal is Apeiron?

    --
    PS: I don't reply to ACs.
    1. Re:Philosophy graduates/phds in the house? by John+Whitley · · Score: 4, 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

      Then the online journal: Apeiron, Studies in Infinite Nature.

      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.

  9. Actually, heresy is a better description by brokeninside · · Score: 3, Informative

    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."

  10. Re:Good article by Randle_Revar · · Score: 3, 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

    --
    Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
  11. Depends on which Apeiron by brokeninside · · Score: 4, Informative
    If it's the one put out by the school of philosophy at UT Austin, it's very reputable. If it's the forum for 'dissident' researchers and opinions not accepted by the conventional system, not so much.

    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.

  12. Re:Hmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    tg;dr?

  13. Re:Good article by steelfood · · Score: 3, 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.

    --
    "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
  14. Plato in "The Mask of Apollo" by handy_vandal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  15. Re:Cretin != Cretan by beanyk · · Score: 4, 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

  16. He was executed for time travel by SlappyBastard · · 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.

    --
    I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
  17. Re:Aristotle? Really? by Sasayaki · · Score: 4, 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.

    --
    Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8