Ancient Philosophy

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

Cosmogony of Plato

Plato's cosmogony is presented in the "Timaeus," which was translated into Latin by Cicero, thus becoming the only one of Plato's dialogues known in the West during the Middle Ages. Both then and earlier, in the era of Neoplatonism, "Timaeus" exerted a more profound influence than all of Plato's other works, a curious phenomenon considering it undoubtedly contains more outright absurdities than can be found in his other writings. As a philosophical work, it lacks intrinsic interest; however, its historical significance is so considerable that it merits thorough examination.

In "Timaeus," the role held by Socrates in earlier dialogues is assumed by a Pythagorean. The theories of this school are largely echoed in "Timaeus," including the view that numbers underlie the explanation of the universe. The dialogue begins with a summary of the first five books of "The Republic," followed by the myth of Atlantis, said to be an island near the Pillars of Hercules, larger than Libya and Asia combined. Then, Timaeus, a Pythagorean astronomer, recounts the history of the cosmos up to the creation of humanity. He broadly states the following:

What is unchanging is grasped by reason and thought; what is changeable belongs to opinion. The world, being sensory, cannot be eternal and must have been created by God. As God is benevolent, He fashioned the world in the likeness of the eternal; not being envious, He desired that all should be as similar to Himself as possible. "Wishing that all should be good and that there should be as little evil as possible, God thus encountered all that was visible not in a state of rest but in chaotic and disorderly motion, transforming disorder into order, considering the latter in every respect better than the former." (Thus, it appears that Plato's God, in contrast to the Jewish and Christian God, did not create the world ex nihilo but rather rearranged pre-existing material.) He infused mind into the soul and the soul into the body. He made the world as a whole a living being, endowed with life and intellect. There is but one world, not many, as various pre-Socratics taught; there cannot be more than one world, since it is a created copy that must closely resemble the eternal original, as conceived by God. The world, in its entirety, is one visible animal, encompassing all other animals. It is spherical because what is similar is infinitely more beautiful than what is dissimilar, and only a sphere is uniformly similar to itself. It rotates because circular motion is the most perfect; and since this is its only motion, it requires neither legs nor arms.

The four elements—fire, air, water, and earth—each apparently represented by a number, are in constant proportion; that is, fire relates to air as air relates to water and as water relates to earth. God utilized all these elements in the creation of the world, which is therefore perfect and immune to aging or disease. The world is harmonized by proportion, and harmony engenders a spirit of friendship within it, hence only one God can dissolve the world into parts.

God first created the soul and then the body. The soul consists of the indivisibly unchangeable and the divisible changeable. This represents a third and intermediate kind of essence.

Next follows the Pythagorean interpretation of the planets, leading to an explanation of the origin of time: "And when the Father beheld that what he had generated, this likeness of the eternal gods, moves and lives, he rejoiced and in his delight resolved to make [the creation] even more like the archetype. Since the archetype is an eternally living being, he endeavored, to the extent possible, to achieve this likeness; but it turned out that the nature of that living being is eternal, which cannot be fully conveyed to anything born. Therefore, he resolved to create a moving likeness of eternity; in arranging the heavens, he simultaneously creates for eternity, which abides in the unity, an eternal image, moving from number to number, which we have called time."

Prior to this, there were neither days nor nights. We should not speak of eternal essence as having been or being to come; it is correct only to say that it is. It is implied that regarding the "moving likeness of eternity," it is accurate to say it was or will be.

Time and the heavens appeared simultaneously. God created the sun so that living beings could study arithmetic; it is presumed that without the alternation of days and nights, we would have no concept of numbers. The observation of days and nights, months and years led to the knowledge of numbers and gave us the notion of time, and from this arose philosophy. This is the greatest advantage we owe to vision.

There are, besides the world as a whole, four kinds of animals: gods, birds, fish, and terrestrial creatures. The gods are primarily fire; the fixed stars are divine and eternal animals. The Creator told the gods that he could destroy them, but he would not do so. He allowed them to create the mortal parts of all other animals, after he had made the immortal and divine parts. (This passage, like other references to gods in Plato, should likely not be taken literally. Initially, Timaeus states that he seeks only plausibility and cannot be certain. Many details are clearly fictional and were not meant to be understood literally.)

The Creator, Timaeus states, fashioned one soul for each star. Souls possess emotions—love, fear, and anger; if they prevail over these feelings, they lead a righteous life; if not, an unrighteous one. If a person lives a good life, after death they will dwell eternally and happily on their star. Conversely, if they live poorly, they will be reborn as a woman. If, while in the female form, they continue to behave poorly, they will be transformed into an animal, and this cycle of transformations will continue until their intellect prevails. God placed some souls on Earth, some on the Moon, and others on different planets and stars, allowing lesser gods to form their bodies.

There are two kinds of causes: rational causes and causes that stem from something else, in turn set in motion and necessarily imparting motion to other things. The former are endowed with intellect and create the beautiful and the good, while the latter, lacking understanding, produce always chaotic happenstance. Both kinds of causes must be studied, for the cosmos possesses a mixed nature, born from the combination of necessity and reason. (It should be noted that necessity is not subject to the authority of God.) Timaeus then transitions to the role attributed to necessity.

The earth, air, fire, and water are not the primary beginnings, letters, or elements; they are not even syllables or composite words. Fire, for instance, should not be termed "this," but rather "such," meaning it is not substance but rather a state of substance. This raises the question: are the perceived essences merely names? We are told that the answer depends on whether reason and true opinion are the same. If not, then knowledge must be knowledge of essences, and therefore essences cannot simply be names. Reason and true opinion, of course, differ, for one is instilled through instruction, while the other is through persuasion; one is accompanied by true understanding, while the other is not; all people share true opinion, but reason is an attribute of the gods and of very few among men.

This leads to a rather intriguing theory of space as something intermediary between the world of essences and the world of transitory sensory things.

“…Firstly, there is the identical idea, ungenerated and unyielding, perceiving nothing within itself from anywhere and entering into nothing, unseen and sensed in no other way, but entrusted to the care of thought. Secondly, there is something similar to this idea, bearing the same name—perceptible, generated, eternally moving, arising in a certain place and then disappearing from it, which is perceived through opinion combined with sensation. Thirdly, there is yet another kind, namely space: it is eternal, does not accept destruction, provides a dwelling for everything that is born, but is perceived outside of sensation, through a kind of illicit reasoning, and it is almost impossible to believe in it. We see it as if in dreams and assert that this being must necessarily exist somewhere, in some place and occupy some space; while that which is neither on the earth nor in the heavens seems as if it does not exist.”

This is a very difficult passage, and I do not claim to fully understand it. I think the theory expressed here must have arisen from contemplation of geometry and evidently represents a subject of pure reason, akin to arithmetic, and yet it must relate to space, which is an aspect of the sensory world. Generally, it is unrealistic to seek analogies with later philosophers, but I cannot help but think that Kant would have appreciated this perspective on space, as akin to his own.

Timaeus asserts that the true elements of the material world are not earth, air, fire, and water, but rather two kinds of right-angled triangles: one that forms half of a square, and the other that forms half of an equilateral triangle. Initially, all was mixed together, and "the four kinds became distinct in space even before the time came for the Universe, arranged from them, to be born." However, God first endowed them with form and number, “...they were brought by God to the highest beauty possible for them and to the utmost perfection from an entirely different state.” We are told that the aforementioned two types of triangles are the most beautiful forms, and therefore God utilized them in the creation of matter. Through these two triangles, one can construct four or five regular geometric solids, with each atom of one of these four elements being a regular geometric body: atoms of earth are cubes, of fire are tetrahedra, of air are octahedra, and of water are icosahedra. (I will soon arrive at the dodecahedron.)

The theory of regular geometric solids, proposed in Euclid's thirteenth book, was a new discovery in Plato's era; it was completed by Theaetetus, who appears as a very young man in the dialogue bearing his name. According to tradition, he was the first to prove that there are only five kinds of regular geometric solids and to discover the octahedron and the icosahedron. The regular tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron have equilateral triangles as their faces, while the dodecahedron has regular pentagons and therefore cannot be constructed from Plato’s two triangles. For this reason, Plato does not resort to the dodecahedron in connection with the aforementioned four elements.

As for the dodecahedron, Plato merely states: “There remained a fifth polyhedral construction: God designated it for the Universe and resorted to it when He adorned and decorated it.” This passage is obscure, but it contains a hint that the Universe is a dodecahedron; however, in other passages, it is stated that it takes the form of a sphere. The pentagram has always held a prominent place in magic, and apparently owes this position to the Pythagoreans, who called it “health” and used it as a symbol for identifying members of the brotherhood. It likely owes its properties to the fact that the dodecahedron has pentagons as its faces and, in a sense, represents a symbol of the Universe. This theme is intriguing, but it is difficult to establish anything definitive here.

After discussing perception, Timaeus moves on to explain that humans possess two souls: one immortal and the other mortal; one created by God and the other created by lesser gods. The mortal soul encompasses “...dangerous states dependent on necessity: firstly, pleasure, that strongest lure of evil; then suffering, which repels us from good; in addition, two irrational advisers—audacity and fear; and lastly, anger, which does not heed entreaties, and hope, which heedlessly responds to temptations. All these they mixed with irrational sensation and an all-consuming love, thus completing the mortal kind of soul according to the laws of necessity.”

The immortal soul resides in the head, while the mortal soul dwells in the chest. This dialogue contains intriguing physiological ideas. For example, it proposes that the purpose of the intestines is to prevent gluttony by retaining food within them. Moreover, it offers another explanation of the transmigration of souls: cowardly or dishonest men in their next life will become women. Not bad, but frivolous men who believe that astronomy can be studied by gazing at the stars without knowledge of mathematics will be transformed into birds; those who do not turn to philosophy will become wild animals inhabiting the earth; and the most foolish will become fish.

The final paragraph of this dialogue summarizes the entire discussion: “Now we shall say that our reasoning has come to an end. For having incorporated mortal and immortal beings and being enriched by them, our cosmos has become a visible living being, encompassing all that is visible, a sensuous God, the image of the intelligible God, the greatest and best, the most beautiful and perfect, a singular and homogeneous sky.”

It is challenging to discern what in Timaeus should be taken seriously and what ought to be regarded as a flight of fancy. I believe we should take seriously the explanation of the creation of the world as the establishment of order from chaos, just as the relationship between the four elements and their connection to regular solids and the triangles that constitute them merits consideration. The explanation of time and space is precisely the kind in which Plato is convinced; the same applies to the view of the created world as a copy of an eternal archetype. The blending of necessity and purpose in the world is a conviction characteristic of nearly all Greeks long before the advent of philosophy. Plato embraced this belief, thereby sidestepping the problem of evil that preoccupies Christian theology. He seriously believed, as it seems to me, that the world is a living being. Yet the details concerning the transmigration of souls and the roles attributed to gods and other subordinate natural forces appear to me to be included merely to lend a semblance of specificity to the exposition.

This dialogue, as I have noted earlier, merits study, for it has exerted a profound influence on ancient and medieval thought; and this influence extends beyond the least fantastical aspects.