The Form of Goodness and Plato's physics

(Originally written August 24, 2016 in Book 26)

The Form of Goodness gives the objects of knowledge (the forms) their truth. "It is the course of knowledge and truth; and so, while you may think of it as an object of knowledge, you will do well to regard it as something beyond truth and knowledge" (Jones, 133). The form of the good gives not only the other forms their truth and ability to be known, but their very being.

For Plato, all knowledge comes through the dialectic. Thus, one must live near and converse with a good-souled man to pick up knowledge. The truth of the forms comes not in tidy little maxims, but in conversation. A moral and intellectual osmosis occurs naturally over time between the two seekers. But, if not everyone can have this opportunity, Plato offers his myths (analogies) to give some light on the truth. These myths are not descriptions of reality, but imitations.

For Plato, man was not merely a curious observer of the universe. The forms (objects of knowledge) were not simple, brute facts to be acquired. Man is moral, aesthetic social and religious in nature. The forms are likewise such. "The world and man form an organic unity. The reality out there waiting to be known is somehow consonant with the moral knower" (Jones, 135).

The assent to learning the form of Goodness is difficult, painful and isolating. But it is worth the effort and trials. "Without having had a vision of this form no one can act with wisdom, either in his own life or in matters of state" (Jones, 137).

The assent to knowledge is isolating because the majority who have not yet ascended live in ignorance and prejudice without realizing they are living in that state and worse, one happy imn their ignorance.

One of Plato's central themes is the social nature of man. Being social he has moral obligations. Being social in nature, man is likewise obligated to his society. When he learns the form of the Good he is obligated to teach it to others and use it in his public affairs.

Man finds his life worth living as he contemplates absolute beauty, essential beauty.

For Plato, beauty is truth and truth is beauty.

Both The Republic and Symposium highlight the essential social aspect of man in ascending towards knowledge. "If one reaches the top it is only beacause of an opportunity for association with some initiate who has been willing to descend again into the cave" (Jones, 143).

The dialectic is essential to the acquisition of knowledge because knowledge of the truth (Beauty, the form of the good) is a cooperative advancement towards the good.

Plato believed that the knowledge of things like justice and equality could not come to man from empirical sources, but empirical sources show how equal things are not absolute equality, but fall short. He argues that we know absolute equality prior to birth because absolute equality is not physical.

1) Either we know something or nothing
2) We know at least one thing
3) There is at least one thing known
4) Knowledge is possible
5) "Forms exist, for only forms have the characteristics immutability, eternity, requisite for knowledge" (Jones, 145).

The proofs for forms from Plato are weak because instead of offering conclusive evidence of the forms it hangs on the inability of others to refute it. Problematically for Plato is that just because an arguer cannot refute the existence of forms doesn't mean that a refutation doesn't exist or that the arguer might not come up with one in the future.

Chapter 5 - Plato: the special sciences

Physics

Only Timaeus (of all Plato's dialogues) takes a deep interest in physics. Plato thought finding the truth about man, and politics more important than discovering the nature of the physical world. Besides that, he thought the effort futile because of the nature of the physical world and the failures of earlier philosophers to come to agreement on that nature.

The thesis of Timaeus, "if physics is about the phsycial world, it is not knowledge; if it is knowledge, it is not about the physical world (Jones, 148).

The physical world is merely a changing likeness of the eternal forms so any physics conclusion is a mere opinion.

Physics offers mechanistic descriptions, which are far less important to Plato than teleological explanations (causes).

Plato denied that colors are self-existent: the color anyone experiences is really just a change in the motion passing from the object and the observer's eye.

Everything sensible is an imitation of some form - the reflection of the corresponding form in some medium.

The medium for these imitations is space. Space is unintelligible and essentially resistant to rational analysis. The only analysis one can give about space (the medium by which all sensible objects appear to observers) is that it is, and that it must be.

The basic stuff of Plato's physical theory are the sensible images of the four forms earth, fire, water and air.

Plato concieved the physical world in geometrical principles and assumed that anlysis of the physical world could be done via geometry.

The geometry of physics can be further reduced to arithmetic because the geometrical nature of the four elements can be reduced to numbers. But in this reduction physics begins to cease being about the sensible world through rationalization and thus, ceases to be physics and becomes about the forms.