Timaeus

One of the dialogues authored by the Greek philosopher Plato (c. 428-348 BCE), and the only known writing of his to ever deal at length with natural science.  This document, which so influenced Western thinkers into and beyond the Middle Ages, is essentially an explanatory account of the creation of the universe.  By analogy, Plato argued that just as the physical triangle is simply an imitation of the intelligible, ideal form “triangle,” so the physical universe itself is merely a changing likeness of the ideal, eternal, unchanging universe, and that human thinking can only present an approximation, a “likely story,” of the true nature of the cosmos.

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Philosophy

Contributed by: Marty Maddox/ CTNS