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Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

prospectmagazine.co.uk

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Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#51

Post by SantalBlush »

keiferski wrote: post #35
SantalBlush wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Plato's major contribution to philosophy was his method of analysis, and not his specific ideas. Is that on the right track?

Not really. Both his ideas and his method (dialogues) have been very influential. These days, you could probably say that his ideas are more influential than his method: not many academic philosophers write in dialogue form, but his ideas are still referenced constantly.

Thank you. I guess by 'method of analysis', I meant the way he refined definitions in an attempt to make them logically consistent, not his use of dialogue necessarily. I'm just a layman, but it seemed to me like that was what distinguished him from his contemporaries.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#52

Post by kelseyfrog »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #21
jerf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He kept Mechanics for 2000 in the dark ages," You can blame him for being wrong at first, but somewhere around, oh, 200 years later (very, very conservatively), the people who treated him as an unimpeachable source really ought to be assigned about 100% of the responsibility. "A bit of mathematics would have helped." Your use of modern terminology in the previous sentence leads me to think you're not clear on how pr…

> you're not clear on how primitive mathematics is for Aristotle Completely agree, and to add some color: Aristotle lived about 100 years after Pythagoras, meaning in his time a²+b²=c² was groundbreaking material.

Interestingly, there is no actual reference to Pythagoras for this discovery until 5 centuries later, by Greek authors Plutarch and Cicero attributing this theorem specifically to Pythagoras.

However, Pythagoras’ Theorem is often linked to the Babylonians. There are implications of the theory on a fragment of a clay tablet from Babylonia in the Plimpton 322, dating back to approximately 1800 BCE.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#53

Post by griffzhowl »

jerf wrote: post #14
rurban wrote: post #2

Not just Plato, Aristoteles even more. He kept Mechanics for 2000 in the dark ages, by assuming that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects in proportion to their weight. He argued that a 10-pound stone would fall 10 times faster than a 1-pound stone. Continuous force is needed for continuous motion - without a force pushing it, a moving object would immediately stop. In fact continuous force leads to conti…

"He kept Mechanics for 2000 in the dark ages," You can blame him for being wrong at first, but somewhere around, oh, 200 years later (very, very conservatively), the people who treated him as an unimpeachable source really ought to be assigned about 100% of the responsibility. "A bit of mathematics would have helped." Your use of modern terminology in the previous sentence leads me to think you're not clear on how pr…

Just to note all those points of Aristotle were corrected by Galileo, before calculus.

One thing that Galileo did more systematically than his precursors was that he found ways to treat time geometrically, as a spatial magnitude, so then he could draw distance-time graphs, and velocity-time graphs, which helped him in coming up with his law of fall (distance in free fall is proportional to the square of the time taken to fall), and then to deduce that the trajectory of a projectile is a parabola

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#54

Post by nathan_compton »

msgodel wrote: post #37
nathan_compton wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dominant view? Weird definition of dominant. I happen to actually be something like a nihilistic secular materialist and as far as I can tell I'm in a vanishingly small minority. I see this kind of comment a lot and I am dumbfounded by it all the time. Most scientists in the US believe in God or a higher power, most Americans do too. The current government is chock full of weirdos with supernatural beliefs and it…

I think there's a plurality of views in the US but material utilitarianism is how most people including scientists seem to argue for policy. The current government is kind of an iconoclastic reaction to some of the recent failings of that view.

Please elaborate. Genuinely curious.

I'll be frank with my perspective: trying to understand recent (say the last 50 years) of US history on a "materialist -> idealist" axis is hilariously absurd. There has been literally no moment in the history of the united states that I can think of where anything like a truly materialist public facing justification for policy has ever been offered.

And while its true that the failings of the ruling cast tend to be mercenary in nature, which is to say that they are mostly out for themselves, this really is neither here nor there philosophically, and is more a condition of ruling classes everywhere and one not deeply related to the navel gazing of philosophers.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#55

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

danielbln wrote: post #23
pcthrowaway wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect someone prompted an LLM: write an article that makes an unconventional argument about a philosopher.

In 2018? That's pretty impressive.

We need to coin a phrase for this constant accusal of "being written by LLM". LLM-ophobia?

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#56

Post by WithinReason »

Osmium wrote: post #4
rurban wrote: post #2

Not just Plato, Aristoteles even more. He kept Mechanics for 2000 in the dark ages, by assuming that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects in proportion to their weight. He argued that a 10-pound stone would fall 10 times faster than a 1-pound stone. Continuous force is needed for continuous motion - without a force pushing it, a moving object would immediately stop. In fact continuous force leads to conti…

It’s actually a very reasonable approximation within a certain regime: https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057 There’s a reason people without training in sciences sometimes have the intuition that heavier things fall faster. This intuition isn’t developed in a vacuum (hah).

You can disprove this idea even in a simple thought experiment, you don't even need an actual experiment. If I take 2 large stones, connect them with a string so it's 1 object, will that object fall twice as fast than the 2 stones fall separately?

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#57

Post by keiferski »

SantalBlush wrote: post #51
keiferski wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Both his ideas and his method (dialogues) have been very influential. These days, you could probably say that his ideas are more influential than his method: not many academic philosophers write in dialogue form, but his ideas are still referenced constantly.

Thank you. I guess by 'method of analysis', I meant the way he refined definitions in an attempt to make them logically consistent, not his use of dialogue necessarily. I'm just a layman, but it seemed to me like that was what distinguished him from his contemporaries.

I think you might be thinking of Socrates, who is indeed mostly known for his Socratic method. But it’s a bit complicated, as we mostly know of Socrates from Plato’s writings, in which he is usually the main character. Socrates didn’t write anything down himself.

In any case, both Socrates and Plato have been immensely influential on Western thought, probably more than anyone else.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#59

Post by SantalBlush »

keiferski wrote: post #57
SantalBlush wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I guess by 'method of analysis', I meant the way he refined definitions in an attempt to make them logically consistent, not his use of dialogue necessarily. I'm just a layman, but it seemed to me like that was what distinguished him from his contemporaries.

I think you might be thinking of Socrates, who is indeed mostly known for his Socratic method. But it’s a bit complicated, as we mostly know of Socrates from Plato’s writings, in which he is usually the main character. Socrates didn’t write anything down himself. In any case, both Socrates and Plato have been immensely influential on Western thought, probably more than anyone else.

Thanks again. I do know all of this, and I've read quite a few of his works. I was hoping someone who has formally studied philosophy or the history of philosophy could give an in-depth take.

Re: Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)

#60

Post by keiferski »

SantalBlush wrote: post #59
keiferski wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might be thinking of Socrates, who is indeed mostly known for his Socratic method. But it’s a bit complicated, as we mostly know of Socrates from Plato’s writings, in which he is usually the main character. Socrates didn’t write anything down himself. In any case, both Socrates and Plato have been immensely influential on Western thought, probably more than anyone else.

Thanks again. I do know all of this, and I've read quite a few of his works. I was hoping someone who has formally studied philosophy or the history of philosophy could give an in-depth take.

Sure, I mean you’re kind of right there with the comment about Socrates being known for his method as compared to his contemporaries. But the key is that his method is seen as such a radical departure that he is typically considered the “first” philosopher, with other Greek thinkers before him lumped into the category of pre-Socratics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Socratic_philosophy

This is a narrative though, and of course the actual history of philosophy is more complicated. But at least in academic philosophy, the order of teaching and categorization usually goes pre-Socratics, then Socrates and Plato, then Aristotle.

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