One Book, The Whole Universe

D. Mohr Richard

Description

The much-anticipated anthology on Plato'sTimaeus-Plato's singular dialogue on the creation of the universe, the nature of the physical world, and the place of persons in the cosmos-examining all dimensions of one of the most important books in Western Civilization: its philosophy, cosmology, science, and ethics, its literary aspects and reception. Contributions come from leading scholars in their respective fields, including Sir Anthony Leggett, 2003 Nobel Laureate for Physics. Parts of or earlier versions of these papers were first presented at the Timaeus Conference, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in September of 2007.To this day, Plato's Timaeus grounds the form of ethical and political thinking called Natural Law-the view that there are norms in nature that provide the patterns for our actions and ground the objectivity of human values. Beyond the intellectual content of the dialogue's core, its literary frame is also the source of the myth of Atlantis, giving the West the concept of the "lost world."

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Parmenides Publishing
• Date de parution: 05 mai 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781930972612
• Langue: English

Extrait

ONE BOOK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE
ONE BOOK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE
Plato s Timaeus Today
Edited by Richard D. Mohr and Barbara M. Sattler
PARMENIDES PUBLISHING Las Vegas | Zurich | Athens
2010 Parmenides Publishing All rights reserved.
Published 2010 Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-930972-32-2 E-Book ISBN: 978-1-930972-61-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data One book, the whole universe : Plato s Timaeus today / edited by Richard D. Mohr and Barbara M. Sattler p. cm. Proceedings of a conference held Sept. 13-16, 2007 at the University of Illinois (Urbana). Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-930972-32-2 (pbk.) 1. Plato. Timaeus. 2. Cosmogony, Ancient. I. Mohr, Richard D. II. Sattler, Barbara M., 1974- B387.O53 2010 113-dc22
2010000651 Typeset in Garamond and OdysseaUBSU (Greek), and Indexed by 1106 Design, www.1106design.com . | Cover design by the BookDesigners.com Printed and lay-flat bound by Edwards Brothers, Inc., www.edwardsbrothers.com .
Necessity (from Finian s Rainbow ). Lyrics by E. Y. Yip Harburg. Music by Burtan Lane. Copyright 1946 (Renewed) Glocca Morra Music and Chappell Co., Inc. Glocca Morra Music administered by Next Decade Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
Selected Images from Embryological House (1999), , Imaginary Forces New York (2000), , and Bloom House (2008), , reproduced with permission from Greg Lynn FORM, Venice, CA. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
Selected Images from Clad Cuts (2005), , Merletti Lace (2006), , Cherry Blossom (2007), , and Fabric Tower (2008), , reproduced with permission from Elena Manferdini / Atelier Manferdini, Venice, CA Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
Images of the Filigree Headdresses Worn by Miao Women , , reproduced with permission from Photographer Weizhong (Frank) Chen and Weizhong Chen Visual Art Center | www.cwz9.com .
Image of the Hubble Deep Field , , reproduced with permission from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), European Space Agency (ESA); S. Beckwith, Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) Team.
1-888-PARMENIDES www.parmenides.com www.platostimaeustoday.com
Table of Contents
Necessity
Plato s Cosmic Manual: Introduction, Reader s Guide, and Acknowledgments Richard D. Mohr
Notes on Contributors
I. The Big Questions
1. Plato s Timaeus: Some Resonances in Modern Physics and Cosmology Anthony J. Leggett
II. God and Related Matters
2. Cosmic Craftsmanship in Plato and Stoicism Anthony A. Long
3. Philosopher-Kings and Craftsman-Gods Allan Silverman
4. The Place of Cosmology in Plato s Later Dialogues Charles H. Kahn
5. Maker or Father? The Demiurge from Plutarch to Plotinus Matthias Vorwerk
6. Plato on (just about) Everything: Some Observations on the Timaeus and Other Dialogues Thomas M. Robinson
III. Space, Place, and Motion: The Receptacle of Becoming
7. Visualizing Platonic Space Donald Zeyl
8. The Receptacle and the Primary Bodies: Something from Nothing? Verity Harte
9. The Timaeus and the Critique of Presocratic Vortices Stephen Menn
10. What s the Matter? Some Neo-Platonist Answers Ian Mueller
11. Derrida s Kh ra, or Unnaming the Timaean Receptacle Zina Giannopoulou
IV. Aristotle s Timaeus
12. Should Aristotle Have Recognized Final Causes in Plato s Timaeus? Thomas K. Johansen
13. Aristotle on Plato on Weight Alan Code
V. Reason and Myth
14. What Makes a Myth eik s ? Remarks Inspired by Myles Burnyeat s EIK S MYTHOS G bor Betegh
15. The Epistemological Section (29b-d) of the Proem in Timaeus Speech: M. F. Burnyeat on eik s mythos , and comparison with Xenophanes B34 and B35 Alexander P. D. Mourelatos
VI. Time, Narrative, and Myth
16. A Time for Learning and for Counting: Egyptians, Greeks, and Empirical Processes in Plato s Timaeus Barbara M. Sattler
17. Narrative Orders in the Timaeus and Critias Kathryn A. Morgan
18. Timaeus in Tinseltown: Atlantis in Film Jon Solomon
VII. Timaean Architecture: Timber Framing the Universe and Building Today
19. The Atlantis Effect: The Lost Origins of Architecture Anthony Vidler
20. Plato s Timaeus and the Aesthetics of Animate Form Ann Bergren
VIII. Ever After, Ever Before
21. Time and Change in an Eternal Universe Sean M. Carroll
Necessity
What is the curse That makes the universe So all bewilderin ?
What is the hoax That just provokes the folks They call God s childerin?
What is the jinx That gives a body And his brother And ev ry one aroun The run aroun ?
Necessity, necessity That most unnecessary thing, Necessity. What throws the monkey wrench in A fellow s good intention, That nasty old invention, Necessity!
My feet wanna dance in the sun, My head wants to rest in the shade, The Lord says, Go out and have fun, But the landlord says, Your rent ain t paid!
Necessity, It s plain to see What a lovely old world This silly old world Could be- But man, it s all in a mess Account of necessity.
Necessity, necessity There ought to be a law against necessity. I d love to play some tennis, Or take a trip to Venice, But sister, here s the menace, Necessity.
Old Satan s the father of sin And Cupid s the father of love. Oh, hell is the father of gin But no one knows the father of Necessity, Necessity,
That s the maximum That a minimum Thing can be.
There s nothing lower than less, Unless it s Necessity.
- E. Y. Y IP H ARBURG
Necessity is a lyric from the renowned musical play, Finian s Rainbow (1947). Music by Burton Lane.
Plato s Cosmic Manual: Introduction, Reader s Guide, and Acknowledgements
Richard D. Mohr
Introduction
This collection of essays brings together physicists, philosophers, classicists, and architects to assess the meaning and impact of one of the most profound and influential works of Western letters-Plato s Timaeus, a work which comes as close as any to giving a comprehensive account of life, the universe, and everything, and does so in a startlingly narrow compass. Its core is but sixty-five pages long.
This core gives an account of the nature of god and creation, a theory of knowledge that explains various grades of cognition, a comprehensive taxonomy of the soul and perception, and an account of the objects that gods and souls might know or encounter, call them collectively, in John Wesley s phrase, the furniture of the universe. The analytical inventory of this furniture includes theories of what is and is not eternal, of the basic constituents of material objects, of how material objects compound into large scale, even cosmic, structures, of time and of space. There are elaborate accounts of both physical processes and life processes, the nature of making, morality, sickness and health. There are even accounts of accounts, of what can and cannot be said. We have then, in a single book the length of a modest novella, a comprehensive theology, metaphysics, physics, epistemology, and psychology, with significant excursions into logic, biology, astronomy, medicine, and ethics.
Hovering over all of this is the notion that the objects and structures in the world around us-both sub-atomic and cosmic-are, at some deep level, perhaps the deepest level, mathematical constructs. Building on a cosmic scale consists of adjusting ratios and measures found in the materials that confront the builder. Structures at the largest scale are numerical progressions, while the sub-atomic components of the primary bodies, earth, air, fire, and water, are not granules or other bits of stuff, but triangles and squares. When, in Douglas Adams Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy , the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything turns out to be the number forty-two, we are meant to chuckle at both the incongruity and the banality of the answer, but we have in fact wandered deep into Platonic turf. What is basic is quantitative, not qualitative. The basic constituents of material reality are going to be things like number, proportion, and the regular polyhedrons, not properties like yellow, blue, warm-blooded, feathered, hot, cold, dry, wet. Hardly any historians of thought now believe that Plato personally made any significant contributions to mathematics, but his basic vision that the intelligibility of physical reality is fundamentally mathematical has turned out to be right, at least as things now stand in science. Those who view various elements of Plato s theology and metaphysics as at best bloated, should remember that he held out the correct model for science unheralded for over two thousand years until Kepler used regular polyhedrons, the Platonic solids, to get astronomy and, by analogy, all of science back operating on a mathematical paradigm.
It is not surprising then that physicists remain fascinated by the Timaeus, even when they reject what many see as its metaphysical excesses. In this volume, we have two contrasting physicists. Sir Anthony Leggett, 2003 Nobel Laureate for Physics, gives a sympathetic account of the Timaeus general bearings, while astrophysicist Sean Carroll, the New York Times go-to guy for all things cosmological, thinks we can get along just fine without the Timaeus as an intellectual antecedent. Two additional contrasting essays explore the extent to which Plato s geometrizing of the universe is a coherent project. Thomas Johansen argues that Plato overreaches in this project, while Alan Code argues that the geometrizing project has been misunderstood.
So we have gods, some eternal objects, material objects, space, time, and numbers. But wait, there s more. In addition to the Timaeus synoptic presentation of life, the universe, and everything, the dialogue and its companion fragment, the Critias , present one thing more, myth. They contain one of the West s most enduring myths, the legend of Atlantis. As disappointing as the news may be to some New Age-ers and mystics, it app