💯 ”People are clearly hungry for an alternative to the intensely rationalized and techno-bullied tone of contemporary life. They want something deeper than algorithmic feedback loops and regurgitated chatbot chatter.”
The echo chamber of social media starts to feel empty. Looking forward to the challenge, Prof Gioia! Thank you for doing this.
In the words of Pierre from War & Peace, “I want to discover everything!!!”
There's definitely a hunger out there for the serious study of important books, past and present. I opened an online school to help meet the demand, and the bestselling course (out of 20) is....drumroll please...Plato's Republic. It's somehow both timeless and timely, like all genuinely insightful analysis of political and human affairs. Personally, I've found Leo Strauss to be the most helpful and most interesting reader of Plato. But one thing is for sure: we must study and discuss Plato. Ted, I hope your readers take you up on your challenge! MillermanSchool.com
Big Plato guy here. I'm currently completing a new full-length dialogue, Daedalus. The shade of Icarus emerges from the underworld and floats up to his father pondering on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Icarian sea. Does man always have to fly too close to the sun?
We'll find out!
For the record, there has been a pretty regular Plato reading group over zoom over at the Rising Tide Foundation. I've been to a good number of them. You have some smart folks there i.e., they have not been conditioned with the usual Plato talking points, which are largely controlled by gatekeepers.
With that said, assuming we're not reading Plato through the lenses of his many Delphic interpreters, including Allan Bloom, Karl Popper, Leo Strauss, Jowett and co, I think we can observe that the Platonic dialogues are essentially composed as dramas. And Plato was himself essentially a poet and dramatist.
Shelley observed just that:
“The distinction between philosophers and poets has been anticipated. Plato was essentially a poet—the truth and splendor of his imagery, and the melody of his language, are the most intense that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the measure of the epic, dramatic, and lyrical forms, because he sought to kindle a harmony in thoughts divested of shape and action, and he forebore to invent any regular plan of rhythm which would include, under determinate forms, the varied pauses of his style.”
The dialogues are meant to be read as poetical dialogues. We are seeing the axioms of different kinds of people played out in real-time, embodied by real-historical people, and all of it dramatized for the sake of capturing something deeper.
On the other hand, literal readings of Plato tend to obscure the paradoxes and ironies that Plato is trying to bring to our attention. When the dialogues are performed, people are forced into a different mindset i.e., they have to think about intention, delivery, character development etc.
Hence, someone reading the concluding book of the Republic on the question of allowing the poets into the Republic may notice that Plato (and Socrates) is essentially teasing us and being quite humorous. He is inviting us to offer a more potent notion of poetry than simply one centered on making us feel intensely, or painting compelling scenes and vivid imagery that woos audiences, however artfully. He makes the rather fair observation that just because something seems true, compelling, or represents the common experience of people, that isn't any kind of standard for Truth. To the degree people believe it is a standard for Truth, then we can't be surprised if illusions are held as sacred and Philosophy is considered some dirty beggar or menacing stranger.
As Ted observed in his Music to Raise the Dead book, it was common for orators and sophists to cite poets and their verses as a rhetorical device to add weight to their arguments. Add to that the fact that the words of poets were considered quasi-divine revelations... We can appreciate the fact that Plato was involved in some pretty serious business and challenging some pretty powerful institutions. But he knew that unless one could question these kinds of things, one would have to say bye-bye to any kind of viable Republic and its long-term survival. For, no state can survive on a diet of spectacle and entertainment, no matter how illustrious, sophisticated or artful.
Plato was basically calling out the Hollywood of his time... and rightly so.
I love your perspective and echo the sentiment! I couldn't help reading a little "tongue in cheek" with most of the dialogue, especially when it is only Socrates and Glaucon. They almost seem to poke fun at musicians and artists, calling their efforts "in vain." But I can't help but think there's a little sarcasm there, along with a challenge. I imagine Plato calling out those professions (and many other professions mentioned) with a challenge. Art, music, literature, even math, politics, and philosophy CAN be useless and vain if not working for that "Truth." And, as you point out the "Truth" may not necessarily be what is popular and what those professions are producing.
It's like comparing Shakespeare written and "translated" into the No Fear Shakespeare editions as opposed to seeing the plays performed live. I feel like we're missing a lot of innuendo.
Ted, I thought you would enjoy a letter home from an ancestor during the Civil War, the letter still in the possession of my family. The final paragraph reads: "I want you to send me some books to read. Send Plutarch, Macaulay's History and Essays, the Encyclopedia of Anecdotes, Scott's Works, Shakespeare, Byron, Scott's Poems, Hazlitt's Life of Napoleon. Also, Memoirs of an Irish Gentleman, Corinne, and my sketch book."
The Corinne mentioned is a novel from the early 1800s by Germaine de Staël, apparently something he enjoyed reading aloud at night to his illiterate subordinates. While something of a love story to keep interest, it also goes into the history and culture of Italy. Not a bad way to entertain and inform his men.
So, another benefit of what we used to call a "classical education."
Plato is for better and worse central to modern science (especially mathematics), Christianity (through Saint Augustine) and aesthetics (through his concept of Beauty leading to Good).
What's bad about mathematics? I'm a musician who had a talent for maths; I don't buy the maths/music relationship except that it's true there is a lot of maths in music but that's not what musicians think about when they're performing. I've long thought that they're the purest forms of communication, one reason the other emotional. Actually, I think that ‘why do we like music?’ is a really profound question that goes deeply into the nature of being human. And animals respond to it too: there was an elephant sanctuary in India where they had a piano in the middle and almost all the elephants seemed to enjoy tinkering on it (there was one who hated it!). I've met one or two people in my life who didn't like music and they made me very uncomfortable (actually, there was one where I was working as a software engineer. When asked if he ever listened to any music he replied, “Well, I quite like Tears for Fears and The Communards”. The car we were driving in went very quiet until the driver piped up, “Be very, very careful what you say next.” They were the two bands my wife had played in recently!).
I don't think there's any more maths in music than there is in anything else. That's something the Ancient Greeks believed and it continues to this day. Galileo thought the planets revolved in harmonic proportions and Newton listed seven colours of the rainbow to match the diatonic scale. But I don't think it's true at all. Music possibly originates in our need to learn through sound, like birds. What is more mysterious is why do we hear tones in cycles but see along a linear spectrum.
Thank you so much for saying that. The maths/music thing is something that just seems to be accepted, I'm so pleased to find someone who agrees with me. I can see the beauty in maths too and there are obvious mathematical properties in music: the relationship between frequencies and pitch and the rhythmical divisions. However, what gives rhythm its power and what makes great drummers, their ‘feel’, isn't strictly mathematical. Drummers anticipate (play ahead of), lay back (play behind) or play dead on the beat depending on the feel. It's something that's not taught in classical training but all the great musicians have it and it can be learnt. For me, personally, it was learning to play reggae, which uses all three simultaneously (whereas most other genres of music use one at a time).
BTW, there was an interesting series on the BBC by Hannah Fry, a mathematician, in which she explores the question whether mathematics is a fundamental property of the universe, i.e. discovered, or invented. I tend to the former view as did she, ultimately.
LOL, mathematicians are all platonists but I'm not. Maths was invented, a brilliant invention to be sure. It's humans exploring patterns, and sometimes they invent patterns that decades later turn out to help them understand things they never suspected. That's why they think it's discovered. But sometimes they invent patterns that have no correlation in the world either, but the pattern is just as valid. I think that maths is a mental construct that helps us with our limited minds to make sense of the physical world, and it works brilliantly. But it's a human invention, like language and music and chess. Incidentally, maths, music and chess are three activities a child prodigy can be as good as the best adult.
I agree with much of what you say including that that a lot of maths is invented, e.g. set and group theory, which I was particularly interested in. That contradicts my earlier contention that maths is discovered but I would also say that the universe exhibits certain mathematical properties that seem inherent (to me at least, although I wouldn't go as far as Tegmark and say that the universe is a mathematical object in and of itself) and it's in that sense that I consider maths to be discovered: right angled triangles had the properties of Pythagoras's theorem before he discovered/invented it; the ratio of a circle's radius to its circumference had the same value before it was calculated/discovered and called pi; on the other hand, I would say propositional calculus (the formal name for (mathematical) logic) is purely invented; calculus is more difficult. I think it lies somewhere between discovered and invented: the properties of curves it describes existed before Newton's & Leibniz's techniques to calculate them. One argument to support that it was discovered is the synchronicity between Newton and Leibniz although, equally, it could have been a consequence of previous mathematical inventions, an idea whose time had come (but isn't that a Platonist concept, an idea whose ‘time has come’?). I just find it interesting that that happens as often as it does. BTW, Hannah Fry initially thought as you do, that mathematics is an invention. She changed her mind in the course of making her programme but I guess it's more accurate to say that I think it has elements of both. The properties of objects that mathematics describes are inherent but the techniques are invented.
Anyway, thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me and for supplying the title of your book, The Illustrated Story of Pan. It's an intriguing title, I look forward to reading it 🙏🏼.
Pythagoras got "his" theorum from the Babylonians. Calculus is just an approximation. Either way, the reason why I think mathematics can never be the language of the universe, and neither physics too, is that both are blind to two great components of the universe: life and consciousness. The physical sciences are wonderful for explaining and manipulating inanimate matter, but know absolutely nothing about life and consciousness. Leibnitz himself said so, when he said if he could go into a mind as big as a windmill and observe how it worked when that giant was happy, he would still know nothing about happiness.
I struggle to not be Platonist but there are some aspects of mathematics that is difficult to not find transcendental. Take complex numbers for instance. It was centuries before i was found to apply to anything in the real world, or n infinities, but now they are vital to modern science and technology. I find the more I learn about the history of mathematics the more difficult it is to cling to non-Platonism. I still cling but only with my fingernails and teeth.
Ok, quickly. Plato thought the real reality consists of Forms, kind of archetypes that exist in another transcendental plane where one found the real reality. The one we lived in our daily lives was just a poor imitation of that reality. The best example of such Forms are found in mathematics. For example, a perfect line has length but no breadth; whereas a real down to earth line has the width of the pencil you draw it with. So too triangles, circles, etc. So Plato thought maths the highest form of knowledge, which we arrived at through our thought and our third eye. That concept was taken up by Copernicus, Galileo, who decided that God wrote the universe in the language of mathematics The idea that mathematics exists in a transcended plane is still accepted by mathematicians today who believe that mathematics is not created (by humans) but is discovered.
The Christianity link is through a neo-Platonist, Plotinus, who Saint Augustine studied. Through the link with Plato Augustine constructed the complex theology that defined Christianity through the ages. There are many dimensions to it, including the dismissing of the temporal world of the senses and desires; the eternal existence of God - which he took from Plato's Good; the idea of evil as the absence of good (God) plus the free will He gave us; the original sin of Adam (who used his free will to choose evil) that passed down to us; and so forth.
I’ve read Augustine - and came to despise his theories and exigesis of God as both facile and misogynist. (But I admit to finding The established precepts of organized Christianity the same.). Thank you though. You are a teacher -
He was a deeply troubled man but brilliant and his obsessive Cofessions, if you have to stomach to wade through his neuroses, contain some gems of insight. Thank you for the compliment.
Plato thought that Beauty was a Form most easily accessed by us, though a beautiful person. Our attraction to that person grows into an attraction to beauty of character and beauty in general, the highest being the Good. Today that lives in people who believe that contemplating beautiful art in museums of concert halls somehow makes them better people.
Beauty can be pernicious. There are some beautiful theories that describe the world well, but biology is full of historical artifacts, spandrels, kludges, satisficing and a great deal of ugly. Chemistry is almost as bad. It just lacks evolution. Even mathematics has a good supply of ugly if you know where to look, and then you can't unsee it.
Associating beauty with virtue or truth in the human world is an easy way to do a great deal of harm and not a lot of good.
Thank you for that very concise synopsis. Yeah, beauty… I must admit I'm enthralled by beauty of all sorts. Our appreciation of beauty is, to me anyway, one of our defining characteristics, be that the beauty of maths, the physical beauty of another person or that of the arts (music, for me. Music is so strange: why do certain notes and rhythms send shivers down our spine, make us jump for joy or move us to tears?).
Possibly because our earliest relationship with our mother is multi-sensory but dominated by music. Hence the musical way mothers worldwide speak to infants, in slow, high-pitched, exagerratedly lilting tones, which the baby understands long before words. But it was repurposed to bring us together with other people as a survival mechanism - hence the pleasure of singing together.
That's a very interesting point, one I haven't really thought about much (at least musically, more linguistically, but language is musical and certainly rhythmical and I'm a drummer, so I have a deep connexion to rhythm and how it pervades our experience. Thank you 🙏🏼.
And yet it follows that as the universe (out there or in physical discoveries that launch us deeper into the known universe) expands, it would be natural or at least predictable that soft borders skew dimensions.
@TEDGIOIA Could you create a separate section on The Honest Broker for the humanities course posts and comments, similar to what @SimonHaisell has done with his slow reads of War & Peace and the Cromwell Trilogy? It would make them easier to find among all of the other great stuff here.
One of the best teachers I ever had taught partially this way. He was an English teacher, and his method was to ask what we got from a poem or book: what lesson, what emotion, what ideas. And then he asked why it affected us like that, encouraging us to break it down in whatever way spoke to us: rhythm, word patterns, etc.
I really miss his classes. I found that other students had different insights and when we put them all together the poem or story was packed with meaning we didn't see at first.
Not all students liked it, and some of them complained to their parents, who complained to the principal that he wasn't "teaching" us. They wanted him fired. And isn't that just like what happened to Socrates? Some people can't be bothered thinking or maybe they think it's dangerous.
I have just finished Apology. While I was reading and got through it. After finishing it, I was struggling to analyze it, think about why Socrates said certain things he said during the trial. What you are mentioning here could give me a skeleton for doing just that. Can you explain it in more detail?
These are fun questions. in re: 4. I think it can be useful to compare the notion of the allegory of the cave with the Hindu conception of maya - in that, there are inherently veils of illusion we must learn to navigate and pull away to understand reality. The allegory asks us to turn our inquisitive, scientific mind towards our own mind, like trying to perceive our perception apparatus through a mirror. Such investigation reveals the higher, interconnected nature of all reality (ie stepping out of the cave) - and the allegory points out that, in order to make such investigations, one must personally evolve to come into such understanding (ie one cannot return once they have left). The Vedas and the Gospels are deeply concerned with this process.
Also I wouldn’t sweat too much about philosophers ruling the world - Plato also said that these philosophers in training had to go through musical, educational, and vocational training in early life and then had to survive twenty years of public life without assistance before they qualified for a position of leadership.
When visiting my parents' house in the South of France situated in a village of roughly 1,000 inhabitants, I frequently walked up the small hill behind the house in the NW corner of the village. Less than five minutes and you'd be in such total darkens that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face! But the stars! They're beautiful and breathtaking and, sadly, something many never get to see (as the majority of us now live in cities where the light pollution makes all but the brightest objects invisible). On one occasion I was there with my youngest brother and he said looking at the stars always made him feel insignificant. I told him it had the opposite effect on me: however tiny, it made me feel significant and connected, that I am part of the universe. It's a powerful and profound feeling that I wish more people could experience because it engenders a feeling of real and deep empathy, that you matter because you're part of it. It's not a hubristic thing at all, quite the contrary, it's humbling. It's the feeling of connexion and that everything you do makes a difference, perhaps not significantly, but akin to the ‘butterfly effect’, that tiny actions can ripple out and have dramatic effects and that you never know how what you do might change and influence matters.
It might be unwelcome to suggest yet more reading, but for those who might struggle to place Plato in contemporary frames--and for an imaginative and charming take on his character and modes of thought--I recommend 'Plato at the Googleplex' Why Philosophy Won't Go Away' by Rebecca Goldstein.
In your study of great books, what weight will you place on context? For instance, Athens, the cradle of democracy, was a slave-based economy. Socrates, who questions most things, didn't question their existence. Plato mentions the odd chastisement & Aristotle thought they were a good idea. While we appreciate their insight and wisdom that transcends time, it is also useful to know they are prisoners of their age, as we are of ours. What blind spots do we have that will be blindingly obvious in a few thousand years time (assuming humanity survives that long)?
I absolutely love this project, I read Euthyphro last night -- not something I expected to be doing when I got up yesterday; at that point I hadn't yet seen the initial humanities course announcement/launch. But I'm all in.
I'd like to throw one idea out there, for those tackling these texts. Read them aloud. Slowly. Maybe not completely out loud, but at least articulate the words enough, under your breath, that you are at least to some degree physically embodying the language. I've found this practice to be super helpful in slowing my brain down and getting into a mental space that is conducive to deep reading. Helps with comprehension and retention.
Also: I am still a Substack chat virgin, so not quite sure how to get involved in that, how it works.
This is very helpful for me because I’ve never read these works before. I’ve had to learn to slow down my reading so I could understand what was being said since it’s such a different style of writing. I too, had no idea that I’d be participating in something like this but I’m all in! And throughly enjoying listening to Bach!
"I’m suggesting that readers form their own discussion groups ... Perhaps some of you can volunteer to organize or host online groups." --Great idea, and it's already up and running. I suggest anyone interested in online discussion of great books (however defined), for free, check out the Catherine Project: https://catherineproject.org/.
Socrates and Plato both formulated their philosophies in discussion groups with their students- so this would be an electronic version of that.
Rowdy students at that.
💯 ”People are clearly hungry for an alternative to the intensely rationalized and techno-bullied tone of contemporary life. They want something deeper than algorithmic feedback loops and regurgitated chatbot chatter.”
The echo chamber of social media starts to feel empty. Looking forward to the challenge, Prof Gioia! Thank you for doing this.
In the words of Pierre from War & Peace, “I want to discover everything!!!”
There's definitely a hunger out there for the serious study of important books, past and present. I opened an online school to help meet the demand, and the bestselling course (out of 20) is....drumroll please...Plato's Republic. It's somehow both timeless and timely, like all genuinely insightful analysis of political and human affairs. Personally, I've found Leo Strauss to be the most helpful and most interesting reader of Plato. But one thing is for sure: we must study and discuss Plato. Ted, I hope your readers take you up on your challenge! MillermanSchool.com
Great post.
Big Plato guy here. I'm currently completing a new full-length dialogue, Daedalus. The shade of Icarus emerges from the underworld and floats up to his father pondering on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Icarian sea. Does man always have to fly too close to the sun?
We'll find out!
For the record, there has been a pretty regular Plato reading group over zoom over at the Rising Tide Foundation. I've been to a good number of them. You have some smart folks there i.e., they have not been conditioned with the usual Plato talking points, which are largely controlled by gatekeepers.
4 part workshop on the Theatatus:
https://risingtidefoundation.net/platos-thaeatetus-dialogue/
3 part workshop on the Phaedo:
https://risingtidefoundation.net/platos-phaedo/
With that said, assuming we're not reading Plato through the lenses of his many Delphic interpreters, including Allan Bloom, Karl Popper, Leo Strauss, Jowett and co, I think we can observe that the Platonic dialogues are essentially composed as dramas. And Plato was himself essentially a poet and dramatist.
Shelley observed just that:
“The distinction between philosophers and poets has been anticipated. Plato was essentially a poet—the truth and splendor of his imagery, and the melody of his language, are the most intense that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the measure of the epic, dramatic, and lyrical forms, because he sought to kindle a harmony in thoughts divested of shape and action, and he forebore to invent any regular plan of rhythm which would include, under determinate forms, the varied pauses of his style.”
The dialogues are meant to be read as poetical dialogues. We are seeing the axioms of different kinds of people played out in real-time, embodied by real-historical people, and all of it dramatized for the sake of capturing something deeper.
On the other hand, literal readings of Plato tend to obscure the paradoxes and ironies that Plato is trying to bring to our attention. When the dialogues are performed, people are forced into a different mindset i.e., they have to think about intention, delivery, character development etc.
Hence, someone reading the concluding book of the Republic on the question of allowing the poets into the Republic may notice that Plato (and Socrates) is essentially teasing us and being quite humorous. He is inviting us to offer a more potent notion of poetry than simply one centered on making us feel intensely, or painting compelling scenes and vivid imagery that woos audiences, however artfully. He makes the rather fair observation that just because something seems true, compelling, or represents the common experience of people, that isn't any kind of standard for Truth. To the degree people believe it is a standard for Truth, then we can't be surprised if illusions are held as sacred and Philosophy is considered some dirty beggar or menacing stranger.
As Ted observed in his Music to Raise the Dead book, it was common for orators and sophists to cite poets and their verses as a rhetorical device to add weight to their arguments. Add to that the fact that the words of poets were considered quasi-divine revelations... We can appreciate the fact that Plato was involved in some pretty serious business and challenging some pretty powerful institutions. But he knew that unless one could question these kinds of things, one would have to say bye-bye to any kind of viable Republic and its long-term survival. For, no state can survive on a diet of spectacle and entertainment, no matter how illustrious, sophisticated or artful.
Plato was basically calling out the Hollywood of his time... and rightly so.
My two cents.
I love your perspective and echo the sentiment! I couldn't help reading a little "tongue in cheek" with most of the dialogue, especially when it is only Socrates and Glaucon. They almost seem to poke fun at musicians and artists, calling their efforts "in vain." But I can't help but think there's a little sarcasm there, along with a challenge. I imagine Plato calling out those professions (and many other professions mentioned) with a challenge. Art, music, literature, even math, politics, and philosophy CAN be useless and vain if not working for that "Truth." And, as you point out the "Truth" may not necessarily be what is popular and what those professions are producing.
It's like comparing Shakespeare written and "translated" into the No Fear Shakespeare editions as opposed to seeing the plays performed live. I feel like we're missing a lot of innuendo.
Ted, I thought you would enjoy a letter home from an ancestor during the Civil War, the letter still in the possession of my family. The final paragraph reads: "I want you to send me some books to read. Send Plutarch, Macaulay's History and Essays, the Encyclopedia of Anecdotes, Scott's Works, Shakespeare, Byron, Scott's Poems, Hazlitt's Life of Napoleon. Also, Memoirs of an Irish Gentleman, Corinne, and my sketch book."
The Corinne mentioned is a novel from the early 1800s by Germaine de Staël, apparently something he enjoyed reading aloud at night to his illiterate subordinates. While something of a love story to keep interest, it also goes into the history and culture of Italy. Not a bad way to entertain and inform his men.
So, another benefit of what we used to call a "classical education."
Thanks for sharing this story.
It sounds so intriguing.
Plato is for better and worse central to modern science (especially mathematics), Christianity (through Saint Augustine) and aesthetics (through his concept of Beauty leading to Good).
What's bad about mathematics? I'm a musician who had a talent for maths; I don't buy the maths/music relationship except that it's true there is a lot of maths in music but that's not what musicians think about when they're performing. I've long thought that they're the purest forms of communication, one reason the other emotional. Actually, I think that ‘why do we like music?’ is a really profound question that goes deeply into the nature of being human. And animals respond to it too: there was an elephant sanctuary in India where they had a piano in the middle and almost all the elephants seemed to enjoy tinkering on it (there was one who hated it!). I've met one or two people in my life who didn't like music and they made me very uncomfortable (actually, there was one where I was working as a software engineer. When asked if he ever listened to any music he replied, “Well, I quite like Tears for Fears and The Communards”. The car we were driving in went very quiet until the driver piped up, “Be very, very careful what you say next.” They were the two bands my wife had played in recently!).
I don't think there's any more maths in music than there is in anything else. That's something the Ancient Greeks believed and it continues to this day. Galileo thought the planets revolved in harmonic proportions and Newton listed seven colours of the rainbow to match the diatonic scale. But I don't think it's true at all. Music possibly originates in our need to learn through sound, like birds. What is more mysterious is why do we hear tones in cycles but see along a linear spectrum.
Thank you so much for saying that. The maths/music thing is something that just seems to be accepted, I'm so pleased to find someone who agrees with me. I can see the beauty in maths too and there are obvious mathematical properties in music: the relationship between frequencies and pitch and the rhythmical divisions. However, what gives rhythm its power and what makes great drummers, their ‘feel’, isn't strictly mathematical. Drummers anticipate (play ahead of), lay back (play behind) or play dead on the beat depending on the feel. It's something that's not taught in classical training but all the great musicians have it and it can be learnt. For me, personally, it was learning to play reggae, which uses all three simultaneously (whereas most other genres of music use one at a time).
BTW, there was an interesting series on the BBC by Hannah Fry, a mathematician, in which she explores the question whether mathematics is a fundamental property of the universe, i.e. discovered, or invented. I tend to the former view as did she, ultimately.
LOL, mathematicians are all platonists but I'm not. Maths was invented, a brilliant invention to be sure. It's humans exploring patterns, and sometimes they invent patterns that decades later turn out to help them understand things they never suspected. That's why they think it's discovered. But sometimes they invent patterns that have no correlation in the world either, but the pattern is just as valid. I think that maths is a mental construct that helps us with our limited minds to make sense of the physical world, and it works brilliantly. But it's a human invention, like language and music and chess. Incidentally, maths, music and chess are three activities a child prodigy can be as good as the best adult.
I agree with much of what you say including that that a lot of maths is invented, e.g. set and group theory, which I was particularly interested in. That contradicts my earlier contention that maths is discovered but I would also say that the universe exhibits certain mathematical properties that seem inherent (to me at least, although I wouldn't go as far as Tegmark and say that the universe is a mathematical object in and of itself) and it's in that sense that I consider maths to be discovered: right angled triangles had the properties of Pythagoras's theorem before he discovered/invented it; the ratio of a circle's radius to its circumference had the same value before it was calculated/discovered and called pi; on the other hand, I would say propositional calculus (the formal name for (mathematical) logic) is purely invented; calculus is more difficult. I think it lies somewhere between discovered and invented: the properties of curves it describes existed before Newton's & Leibniz's techniques to calculate them. One argument to support that it was discovered is the synchronicity between Newton and Leibniz although, equally, it could have been a consequence of previous mathematical inventions, an idea whose time had come (but isn't that a Platonist concept, an idea whose ‘time has come’?). I just find it interesting that that happens as often as it does. BTW, Hannah Fry initially thought as you do, that mathematics is an invention. She changed her mind in the course of making her programme but I guess it's more accurate to say that I think it has elements of both. The properties of objects that mathematics describes are inherent but the techniques are invented.
Anyway, thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me and for supplying the title of your book, The Illustrated Story of Pan. It's an intriguing title, I look forward to reading it 🙏🏼.
Pythagoras got "his" theorum from the Babylonians. Calculus is just an approximation. Either way, the reason why I think mathematics can never be the language of the universe, and neither physics too, is that both are blind to two great components of the universe: life and consciousness. The physical sciences are wonderful for explaining and manipulating inanimate matter, but know absolutely nothing about life and consciousness. Leibnitz himself said so, when he said if he could go into a mind as big as a windmill and observe how it worked when that giant was happy, he would still know nothing about happiness.
I struggle to not be Platonist but there are some aspects of mathematics that is difficult to not find transcendental. Take complex numbers for instance. It was centuries before i was found to apply to anything in the real world, or n infinities, but now they are vital to modern science and technology. I find the more I learn about the history of mathematics the more difficult it is to cling to non-Platonism. I still cling but only with my fingernails and teeth.
Discovered
Love this!
I can elaborate if you are interested.
I’m interested, if it matters
Ok, quickly. Plato thought the real reality consists of Forms, kind of archetypes that exist in another transcendental plane where one found the real reality. The one we lived in our daily lives was just a poor imitation of that reality. The best example of such Forms are found in mathematics. For example, a perfect line has length but no breadth; whereas a real down to earth line has the width of the pencil you draw it with. So too triangles, circles, etc. So Plato thought maths the highest form of knowledge, which we arrived at through our thought and our third eye. That concept was taken up by Copernicus, Galileo, who decided that God wrote the universe in the language of mathematics The idea that mathematics exists in a transcended plane is still accepted by mathematicians today who believe that mathematics is not created (by humans) but is discovered.
The Christianity link is through a neo-Platonist, Plotinus, who Saint Augustine studied. Through the link with Plato Augustine constructed the complex theology that defined Christianity through the ages. There are many dimensions to it, including the dismissing of the temporal world of the senses and desires; the eternal existence of God - which he took from Plato's Good; the idea of evil as the absence of good (God) plus the free will He gave us; the original sin of Adam (who used his free will to choose evil) that passed down to us; and so forth.
I’ve read Augustine - and came to despise his theories and exigesis of God as both facile and misogynist. (But I admit to finding The established precepts of organized Christianity the same.). Thank you though. You are a teacher -
He was a deeply troubled man but brilliant and his obsessive Cofessions, if you have to stomach to wade through his neuroses, contain some gems of insight. Thank you for the compliment.
Plato thought that Beauty was a Form most easily accessed by us, though a beautiful person. Our attraction to that person grows into an attraction to beauty of character and beauty in general, the highest being the Good. Today that lives in people who believe that contemplating beautiful art in museums of concert halls somehow makes them better people.
Beauty can be pernicious. There are some beautiful theories that describe the world well, but biology is full of historical artifacts, spandrels, kludges, satisficing and a great deal of ugly. Chemistry is almost as bad. It just lacks evolution. Even mathematics has a good supply of ugly if you know where to look, and then you can't unsee it.
Associating beauty with virtue or truth in the human world is an easy way to do a great deal of harm and not a lot of good.
So beauty as a path to higher knowledge? Or proportion?
It’s a subject I’ve thought of (and discussed) at length, myself. Would you share your own thoughts on it?
Thank you for that very concise synopsis. Yeah, beauty… I must admit I'm enthralled by beauty of all sorts. Our appreciation of beauty is, to me anyway, one of our defining characteristics, be that the beauty of maths, the physical beauty of another person or that of the arts (music, for me. Music is so strange: why do certain notes and rhythms send shivers down our spine, make us jump for joy or move us to tears?).
Possibly because our earliest relationship with our mother is multi-sensory but dominated by music. Hence the musical way mothers worldwide speak to infants, in slow, high-pitched, exagerratedly lilting tones, which the baby understands long before words. But it was repurposed to bring us together with other people as a survival mechanism - hence the pleasure of singing together.
That's a very interesting point, one I haven't really thought about much (at least musically, more linguistically, but language is musical and certainly rhythmical and I'm a drummer, so I have a deep connexion to rhythm and how it pervades our experience. Thank you 🙏🏼.
So music is intrinsically voice?
Incredible distillation of it. Keeping it. Thank you!
And yet it follows that as the universe (out there or in physical discoveries that launch us deeper into the known universe) expands, it would be natural or at least predictable that soft borders skew dimensions.
This is brilliant -
@TEDGIOIA Could you create a separate section on The Honest Broker for the humanities course posts and comments, similar to what @SimonHaisell has done with his slow reads of War & Peace and the Cromwell Trilogy? It would make them easier to find among all of the other great stuff here.
One of the best teachers I ever had taught partially this way. He was an English teacher, and his method was to ask what we got from a poem or book: what lesson, what emotion, what ideas. And then he asked why it affected us like that, encouraging us to break it down in whatever way spoke to us: rhythm, word patterns, etc.
I really miss his classes. I found that other students had different insights and when we put them all together the poem or story was packed with meaning we didn't see at first.
Not all students liked it, and some of them complained to their parents, who complained to the principal that he wasn't "teaching" us. They wanted him fired. And isn't that just like what happened to Socrates? Some people can't be bothered thinking or maybe they think it's dangerous.
I have just finished Apology. While I was reading and got through it. After finishing it, I was struggling to analyze it, think about why Socrates said certain things he said during the trial. What you are mentioning here could give me a skeleton for doing just that. Can you explain it in more detail?
I sincerely hope your humanities class is entitled "Oh, the Humanities!"
These are fun questions. in re: 4. I think it can be useful to compare the notion of the allegory of the cave with the Hindu conception of maya - in that, there are inherently veils of illusion we must learn to navigate and pull away to understand reality. The allegory asks us to turn our inquisitive, scientific mind towards our own mind, like trying to perceive our perception apparatus through a mirror. Such investigation reveals the higher, interconnected nature of all reality (ie stepping out of the cave) - and the allegory points out that, in order to make such investigations, one must personally evolve to come into such understanding (ie one cannot return once they have left). The Vedas and the Gospels are deeply concerned with this process.
Also I wouldn’t sweat too much about philosophers ruling the world - Plato also said that these philosophers in training had to go through musical, educational, and vocational training in early life and then had to survive twenty years of public life without assistance before they qualified for a position of leadership.
Thanks for the post :)
When visiting my parents' house in the South of France situated in a village of roughly 1,000 inhabitants, I frequently walked up the small hill behind the house in the NW corner of the village. Less than five minutes and you'd be in such total darkens that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face! But the stars! They're beautiful and breathtaking and, sadly, something many never get to see (as the majority of us now live in cities where the light pollution makes all but the brightest objects invisible). On one occasion I was there with my youngest brother and he said looking at the stars always made him feel insignificant. I told him it had the opposite effect on me: however tiny, it made me feel significant and connected, that I am part of the universe. It's a powerful and profound feeling that I wish more people could experience because it engenders a feeling of real and deep empathy, that you matter because you're part of it. It's not a hubristic thing at all, quite the contrary, it's humbling. It's the feeling of connexion and that everything you do makes a difference, perhaps not significantly, but akin to the ‘butterfly effect’, that tiny actions can ripple out and have dramatic effects and that you never know how what you do might change and influence matters.
It might be unwelcome to suggest yet more reading, but for those who might struggle to place Plato in contemporary frames--and for an imaginative and charming take on his character and modes of thought--I recommend 'Plato at the Googleplex' Why Philosophy Won't Go Away' by Rebecca Goldstein.
thank you
In your study of great books, what weight will you place on context? For instance, Athens, the cradle of democracy, was a slave-based economy. Socrates, who questions most things, didn't question their existence. Plato mentions the odd chastisement & Aristotle thought they were a good idea. While we appreciate their insight and wisdom that transcends time, it is also useful to know they are prisoners of their age, as we are of ours. What blind spots do we have that will be blindingly obvious in a few thousand years time (assuming humanity survives that long)?
I don’t mind hosting/moderating a Zoom group if anyone is interested in study sessions or discussions.
I absolutely love this project, I read Euthyphro last night -- not something I expected to be doing when I got up yesterday; at that point I hadn't yet seen the initial humanities course announcement/launch. But I'm all in.
I'd like to throw one idea out there, for those tackling these texts. Read them aloud. Slowly. Maybe not completely out loud, but at least articulate the words enough, under your breath, that you are at least to some degree physically embodying the language. I've found this practice to be super helpful in slowing my brain down and getting into a mental space that is conducive to deep reading. Helps with comprehension and retention.
Also: I am still a Substack chat virgin, so not quite sure how to get involved in that, how it works.
This is very helpful for me because I’ve never read these works before. I’ve had to learn to slow down my reading so I could understand what was being said since it’s such a different style of writing. I too, had no idea that I’d be participating in something like this but I’m all in! And throughly enjoying listening to Bach!
"I’m suggesting that readers form their own discussion groups ... Perhaps some of you can volunteer to organize or host online groups." --Great idea, and it's already up and running. I suggest anyone interested in online discussion of great books (however defined), for free, check out the Catherine Project: https://catherineproject.org/.
Thank you for the recommendation, Raymond. I'll look into that 🙏🏼
“QUESTION AUTHORITY” subversive mid-60’s T-shirt . I would like to revive it, with attribution to Socrates.