The Cosmic Context of Greek Philosophy: Part Eleven

 The Cosmic Context of Greek Philosophy: Part Eleven

Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Plato 427 – 347 BC

Plato was related through his mother to Critias, one of the Thirty who ruled Athens following the end of the Peloponnesian war, and who was subsequently killed in the retaking of the city by the wealthy elite. Diogenes tells us that Plato was, essentially, the product of the rape of his mother by his father and his followers were fond of pointing out that he was born on the birthday of Apollo. His birth name was actually Aristocles, but was called Plato because of his ‘robust’ build. One gets the impression that he was built like a Sumo wrestler. (He was, in fact, a wrestler.) 

Plato was built like a Sumo wrestler...

He was also noted for having a weak, high voice. Based on just this description, which compares to that of many ancient descriptions of a eunuch, one cannot help but wonder whether or not he suffered some early genital injury or a congenital hormonal imbalance.

Aelian, Varia Historia 10.21
“Know that Perictione used to carry Plato around in her arms. When Ariston, his father, was sacrificing to the Muses or the Nymphs on Hymêttos, the rest of the family was present for the worship and Perictione placed Plato in the nearby myrtles because they were thick and lush. While he slept, a swarm of bees placed some Hymêttian honey on his lips and buzzed their song around him, thus foretelling Plato’s eventual power of speech.”

Supposedly he studied under Heraclitus, but that is unlikely since Heraclitus probably never went to Athens. We are also told that Heraclitus “hated the Athenians and his fellow Ephesians…” and went off to wander in the mountains. Additionally, Heraclitus died in 475 BC while Plato was born almost 50 years later.

Plato became the student of Socrates at the age of 20 and Socrates died when he was 28. So actually, very little of his intellectual life was even involved with Socrates, though he has become the chief purveyor of what Socrates may have thought or intended or said. It’s surprising that more people don’t have a problem with that. He did some traveling about, including visiting the Pythagoreans in Italy, in particular Philolaus and Eurytus. Following this, he went to Egypt in the company of Euripides, probably picking his brain all the way.

Socrates (rubbing chin) discussing philosophy with his most famous pupil, Plato (under tree).

As mentioned in the discussion of Pythagoras, Diogenes Laërtius reports that Satyrus[1] and others said that Plato wrote to Dion in Sicily, instructing him to purchase three Pythagorean books from Philolaus for 100 minae.[2] In the same paragraph (the obvious connection being things Sicilian), he tells us that Alcimus reports that Plato “derived great assistance from Epicharmus the Comic poet, for he transcribed a great deal from him…” This Alcimus is either the Greek rhetorician from around 300 BC or a Sicilian historian about whom almost nothing is known.[3] I would suggest the latter since the subject is a Sicilian comic poet who wrote in a Sicilian dialect, and only another Sicilian might be qualified to recognize the plagiarism and only his dates would fit the claim. This statement is followed by an example from Alcimus where he, apparently in humor, wrote about “objects of sense and objects of thought” and pointed out the plagiarism. Diogenes then – via Alcimus – presents a comic dialogue, evidently by Epicharmus. Further example is given comparing things Plato said to the words of Epicharmus who, we must remember, was writing comedy! Diogenes patches over this at the end of the discussion by saying: “That Epicharmus himself was fully conscious of his wisdom can also be seen from the lines in which he foretells that he will have an imitator”:

And as I think – for when I think anything I know it full well – that my words will some day be remembered; someone will take them and free them from the metre in which they are now set, nay, will give them instead a purple robe, embroidering it with fine phrases; and, being invincible, he will make every one else an easy prey.[4]

Plato made three trips to Sicily and on his first trip, apparently, was ‘forced’ to become the lover of the king Dionysius. Plato allegedly called him a tyrant and said other nasty things, at which point Dionysius had him arrested. So the story goes. He was brought to trial and barely escaped death, though he was condemned to be sold as a slave. Someone paid the price and sent him home to his friends, probably telling them to keep him out of trouble. I think, based on how he later wrote about tyrants being against pederasty, and how he himself was an avowed ‘lover of young boys’, that the charges were more likely to have been along that line. One can hardly imagine the king being attracted to a guy built like a barn and squeaking like a soprano. 

Dion Presents Plato to Dionysius, Anonymous, 1876

Then Diogenes says something rather curious. One variation of the story that he gives is that the ruler, Dionysius, asked Pollis, a visiting Spartan admiral and ambassador, to take Plato off his hands. Pollis took Plato to the slave market on the island of Aegina, and put him up for sale. Plato was miraculously redeemed and then we learn:

Pollis, however, is stated to have been defeated by Chabrias[5] and afterwards to have been drowned at Helice, his treatment of the philosopher having provoked the wrath of heaven… Dionysius, indeed, could not rest. On learning the facts he wrote and enjoined upon Plato not to speak evil of him. And Plato replied that he had not the leisure to keep Dionysius in his mind.[6]

Actually, Pollis did not drown at Helice, he was killed in the mentioned naval battle against Chabrias, probably in 376 BC.

Nevertheless, regarding this alleged drowning of Pollis, we find that something very interesting was going on. It seems that there was a terrible earthquake and tsunami in 372/373 BC and the entire city of Helike (Helice) disappeared, submerged in the sea! 

Helike, lost city of Poseidon in Greece

The much later 2^nd century historian, Aelian, records only that a tsunami swallowed up ten Spartan triremes (galley ships). The entire story looks very suspicious and from our Chronicle of Comets we read:

373-372 BC, Winter, Greece. A comet was seen in the west at the time of the great earthquake and tidal wave at Achaea, Greece. From the Greek descriptions of the comet’s motion, Pingre infers that its perihelion was located in Virgo or Libra and that its perihelion distance was quite small. Pingre considers this comet to be the one the Greek Ephorus reported to have split into two pieces. The accounts given by Aristotle and Seneca suggest the comet was seen in the winter of 373-372 BC while the account of Diodorus Siculus, an historian of the second half of the first century BC, suggests the comet was seen in the following year. (Barrett, 5)[7]

Aristotle mentions four comets in his book Meteorologica, written around the year 330 BC. Apparently, only one of them stood out enough to be called the ‘Great Comet’.

The great comet, which appeared about the time of the earthquake in Achaea and the tidal wave, rose in the west … The great comet … appeared during winter in clear frosty weather in the west, in the archonship of Asteius: on the first night it was not visible as it set before the sun did, but it was visible on the second, being the least distance behind the sun that would allow it to be seen, and setting immediately. Its light stretched across a third of the sky in a great band, as it were, and so was called a path. It rose as high as Orion’s belt, and there disappeared.[8]

Aristotle’s view of the universe lasted for 2,000 years and had far reaching consequences. 

Since the discussion is mainly about the risings of the comet, how on the first night it was too close to the Sun, and on the second was the least distance from the sun to be seen, it’s obvious that he is recording the progress of its risings until, finally, “it rose as high as Orion’s belt and then disappeared.” What this can mean is uncertain.

Diodorus’ description tells us that:

… there was seen in the heavens during the course of many nights a great blazing torch which was named from its shape a flaming beam. Some of the students of nature ascribed the origin of the torch to natural causes, voicing the opinion that such apparitions occur of necessity at appointed times, and that in these matters the Chaldeans in Babylon and the other astrologers succeed in making accurate prophecies … this torch had such brilliancy… and its light such strength that it cast shadows on the earth similar to those cast by the moon.[9]

It is noteworthy that a few scholars think that this event is what inspired Plato to write the ‘myth of Atlantis’.[10] [11] [12] [13] I have a different view, however. I think that Plato got his background for the myth of Atlantis from the lost books of Pythagoras and possibly from discussions with Socrates regarding the work of Heraclitus that required a “Delian diver” to plumb.

Plato and Atlantis

Plato was 23 years old at the end of the Peloponnesian war. He had seen many things during his most impressionable years, including the violent overthrow and death of his uncle, and soon would witness the execution of his teacher. If Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras and Socrates, as well as Critias and other members of the Thirty, were “Delian divers” who made certain ‘cosmic connections’, and Plato realized that those who talked about these things came to a bad end, usually death, no doubt he would have had the idea to handle these ideas, very carefully.

And so, 15 years after his trip to Sicily, after having gone to the trouble to obtain the three books of Pythagoras, after studying Heraclitus, he may have had certain ideas about the earthquake and destruction of Helice.

In my book, Secret History, I discussed Plato’s account of the destruction of Atlantis from a different perspective. With all the additional information that has become available since that time, my view has been somewhat expanded. As we now know from the scientific work partially presented in this volume, the global cometary disasters that destroyed Plato’s Atlantis did actually occur pretty close to the date he gave for them. So, in light of all that, and other things we have uncovered, I think we can safely say that Plato had something to base his story on, but it probably was not an ‘Egyptian priest’. Timaeus and Critias, written by Plato some time around 360 BC (39 years after the death of Socrates and 12 years after the great comet of 373/2) are the only existing written records which specifically refer to Atlantis. Up to that point in time, the great epic destruction stories were the Iliad and Odyssey, and the city was Troy.

Let’s look at the main characters of the dialogues. First, there is Plato’s teacher who died under a repressive regime. Then there is Hermocrates, who was a Syracusan general during the Athenians’ Sicilian expedition that ended so disastrously. Hermocrates is referenced in Thucydides where he gave a speech before the beginning of the war, demanding that the Sicilian Greeks stop their quarreling. In 415 BC, it was he who formed the coalition that included even non-Sicilian cities, in alliance against the aggressor, Athens. Francis Cornford writes:

It is curious to reflect that, while Critias is to recount how the prehistoric Athens of nine thousand years ago had repelled the invasion from Atlantis and saved the Mediterranean peoples from slavery, Hermocrates would be remembered by the Athenians as the man who had repulsed their own greatest effort at imperialist expansion.[14]

Timaeus, the character who gives his name to the title of the dialogue, was a Pythagorean philosopher living c. 420-380. He is credited with a lost work entitled On the Soul of the Universe. Considering what Heraclitus wrote about the ‘Cosmic Mind’, that is certainly suggestive. Keep in mind also that Diogenes Laertius (VIII 85), Hermippus of Smyrna (3^rd century BC), and Timon of Phlius (320-235 BC, claim that Timaeus was influenced by a book about Pythagoras written by Philolaus.  Those individuals would have been in a position to know since the texts probably still existed, but modern scholars reject such an idea.

Timaeus Locrus by Plato (Uncompressed Audio)

The final main character is Plato’s great uncle, Critias[15], who was killed in the overthrow of the Thirty. According to Polybius, he asserted that “religion was a deliberate imposture devised by some cunning man for political ends.”[16] This reminds us of two things: 1) Thucydides’ description of how the Athenians, during the plague at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, felt abandoned by the gods and fell away from their religious practice, which was one of the things the wealthy elite used to control their behavior. The Athenians clearly understood the plague as evidence that they were in the wrong, despite the fact that their elite rulers were demanding the prosecution of the war for reasons of greed and power; 2) After the overthrow of the Thirty, who had been his friends and associates, Socrates constantly criticised the democratic government. It has been suggested that Socrates’ criticism was a threat to the newly re-established democracy and it certainly may have been in a very particular context if he agreed with his friend Critias that “religion was a deliberate imposture devised by some cunning man for political ends.” Speaking the truth about the Natural History of the Earth as revealed by Heraclitus and Pythagoras may very well have contributed to the condemnation of Socrates.  And, we are reminded that he was charged with “refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state, and of introducing other new divinities.”.

The Fragility of Democracy: Athens and the Thirty Tyrants

I would suggest that, by the very selection of the main players in the dialogues, Plato may be trying to convey a message: the very message that was contained in the works of Pythagoras and Heraclitus.

In response to a prior talk by Socrates about ideal societies in the Republic, Timaeus and Critias agree to entertain Socrates with a tale that is “not a fiction but a true story.” The story is about the conflict between the ancient Athenians and the Atlanteans 9,000 years before Plato’s time. Knowledge of the ancient times was apparently forgotten by the Athenians of Plato’s day, and the form the story of Atlantis took in Plato’s account was that Egyptian priests conveyed it to Solon. Solon passed the tale to Dropides, the great-grandfather of Critias. Critias learned of it from his grandfather, also named Critias, son of Dropides, and was now going to tell it. Basically, the story tells how, in a long-ago war made by greedy, power-mad Atlanteans, the Athenians were the good guys. The story abruptly ends with Zeus – the god of gods – seeing the corruption of the Atlanteans, determined to chastise them. Zeus begins to speak; but what he says, and everything that follows in the Critias[17], has been lost. Well, why are we not surprised?

Temple of Zeus (of Athens)

One thing that I find fascinating is that Herodotus, during the second half of the 5^th century BC, almost a hundred years before Plato wrote about Atlantis, reported in the second book of his history that certain Egyptian priests asserted that within historical ages and since Egypt became a kingdom, “four times in this period (so they told me) the sun rose contrary to his wont; twice he rose where he now sets, and twice he set where he now rises.”

So, I think we may assume that Plato took the cue from Herodotus to put the story in the mouth of the Egyptians and made up the name and the details of the civilization, and the moral of the story was that a wonderful civilization that began so well could go so wrong and bring cosmic destruction upon its head.

A few of the details that Plato included are:

There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Phaeton, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father’s chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after long intervals; at such times those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore …

When, on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, the survivors in your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell on the mountains, but those who, like you, live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea. …

The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or of summer does not prevent, mankind exists, sometimes in greater, sometimes in lesser numbers. …

Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times. ...

In the first place you remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones; in the next place, you do not know that there formerly dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, and that you and your whole city are descended from a small seed or remnant of them which survived. And this was unknown to you, because, for many generations, the survivors of that destruction died, leaving no written word. For there was a time, Solon, before the great deluge of all, when the city which now is Athens was first in war and in every way the best governed of all cities, is said to have performed the noblest deeds and to have had the fairest constitution of any of which tradition tells, under the face of heaven….

Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valour. For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean… This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind. She was pre-eminent in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjugated, and generously liberated all the rest of us who dwell within the pillars….

But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. …

I have told you briefly, Socrates, what the aged Critias heard from Solon and related to us. And when you were speaking yesterday about your city and citizens, the tale which I have just been repeating to you came into my mind, and I remarked with astonishment how, by some mysterious coincidence, you agreed in almost every particular with the narrative of Solon; but I did not like to speak at the moment. For a long time had elapsed, and I had forgotten too much; I thought that I must first of all run over the narrative in my own mind, and then I would speak.[18] [Emphasis, mine]

PERINO DEL VAGA (FLORENCE 1501-ROME 1547)

Solon giving laws to the Athenians c.1541

Here we find another interesting clue. Critias has just told us that Socrates was discussing the very things that are included in this story – that everything Socrates had been saying the previous day “agreed in almost every particular with the narrative of Solon.”

And so I readily assented to your request yesterday, considering that in all such cases the chief difficulty is to find a tale suitable to our purpose, and that with such a tale we should be fairly well provided. And therefore, as Hermocrates has told you, on my way home yesterday I at once communicated the tale to my companions as I remembered it; and after I left them, during the night by thinking I recovered nearly the whole it. Truly, as is often said, the lessons of our childhood make wonderful impression on our memories; for I am not sure that I could remember all the discourse of yesterday, but I should be much surprised if I forgot any of these things which I have heard very long ago. I listened at the time with childlike interest to the old man’s narrative; he was very ready to teach me, and I asked him again and again to repeat his words, so that like an indelible picture they were branded into my mind.

As soon as the day broke, I rehearsed them as he spoke them to my companions, that they, as well as myself, might have something to say. And now, Socrates, to make an end my preface, I am ready to tell you the whole tale. I will give you not only the general heads, but the particulars, as they were told to me.

The city and citizens, which you yesterday described to us in fiction, we will now transfer to the world of reality. It shall be the ancient city of Athens, and we will suppose that the citizens whom you imagined, were our veritable ancestors, of whom the priest spoke; they will perfectly harmonise, and there will be no inconsistency in saying that the citizens of your republic are these ancient Athenians. Let us divide the subject among us, and all endeavour according to our ability gracefully to execute the task which you have imposed upon us. Consider then, Socrates, if this narrative is suited to the purpose, or whether we should seek for some other instead.[19]

And we come to the final understanding that conveys to us the secret of the story of Atlantis: that it did not actually come from an Egyptian priest, but that this was a story that was created to “execute the task which you [Socrates] have imposed upon us,” which was to veil in fiction something that was Truth. Does this mean that they were ‘making it up’? No, indeed. It means that Plato was attempting to find a vehicle for the history that would ensure its preservation. I may be giving Plato too much credit, he may have merely wanted to capitalize on Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans for his own aggrandizement, but the facts of the dialogues suggest otherwise. It was political commentary, history, and ethics in relation to the cosmos, all rolled into one.

Another clue is Herodotus. Herodotus wrote around 450/60 BC. He had calculated that the Egyptians were claiming that their nation had existed 11,000 years before his time. That is amazingly close to 12,900 years ago, i.e. 10900 BC, at which point we are fairly certain the cometary event occurred which was discussed in detail by Firestone, West and Warwick-Smith and others since. But we know from the work of other scientists, including Baillie, Bailey, Clube and Napier, that there were other, periodically repeating events – some greater, some localized – like Tunguska or a number of Tunguska-like events. We also know that there are myths and legends about these events that survived amazingly intact into the early 20^th century, and may survive still. So surely, there must have been a general awareness of these things in the times of the ancient Greeks by at least a certain set of people, if not amongst the wider public with their penchant for myths and legends. This is the sort of thing that Herodotus was collecting in his ‘history’. Since Herodotus often speaks of Pythagoras, it may very well be that he was quite aware of what may have brought about the downfall of the Pythagoreans, and thus brought the topic up in a way that would protect him from their fate, i.e. putting it in the mouth of an Egyptian priest as a fantastic claim. I would even suggest that Plato, by doing the same thing, utilizing an Egyptian priest as the source, was explicitly referencing what Herodotus had written, that is, “four times in this period (so they told me) the sun rose contrary to his wont; twice he rose where he now sets, and twice he set where he now rises.” Obviously, we are not talking about a pole flip here, but a blazing, sun-like, destructive comet approaching the Earth from the West, a comet as bright as the Sun, or even brighter, sending out thunderbolts, shedding flaming rocks and dust, and roaring with the sound of a thousand crashing seas; Zeus as the representation of the ‘Cosmic Mind’ “setting things in order” because humanity had lost their moral compass.

So Herodotus may have been telling us that this sort of civilization-destroying event had occurred four times within a certain historical period. Counting the Noachian Flood as a fifth event – actually the main onslaught of the Giant Comet, probably the most destructive – we have a recurrence of the ‘Big One’ about every 2,500 years. Yet, as we noted already, the dates that the various researchers have given to large events that can be discerned in the scientific records (tree rings and ice cores) are 12800 (or 10900), 8200, 7000, 5200, 4200, 3000, 2354, 1628, 1150, 500, 208 BC and 550, 850 and 1300 AD. [20] (These can be adjusted as more precise dating methods are developed or applied.) That’s a lot more than “four times”. But certainly, each of those events would not have been accompanied by the “sun rising in the west,” i.e. a comet approaching very close from that direction, so obviously Plato and the gang didn’t have the whole scientific banana. (Neither do we!) What Plato had, which seems to shine through the philosophical threads we have followed, was the idea that humanity could bring this sort of destruction on themselves, as suggested by Heraclitus, though it was simply a natural reaction of forces, not necessarily anything that was conscious and deliberate on the part of some god. Also, as I have pointed out, simple math demonstrates that the time distance between those numbers is as follows: 4,600, 1,200, 1,800, 1,000, 1,200, 646, 726, 478, 650, 292, 758, 300 and 450 years. Is the decreasing time period indicative of the increasing corruption of humanity? And can we define ‘corruption of humanity’ as a failure to deeply study nature, learn its natural laws, and live in accordance with them?

So, what did Plato get for his efforts? So far, we’ve found him being accused of plagiarizing all over the place, making fun of people by using the dialogues of a comic to formulate ‘philosophy’, probably nearly getting put to death for pederasty, and covering up a significant historical event. These accusations may or may not be true. 

Fernando Santoro

"Epicharmus and the plagiarism of Plato p. 307"

We certainly realize from his dialogues, Phaedrus and the Symposium, that what Plato wrote and thought and felt bears very little resemblance to what we may think of as ‘Platonic Love’, which is supposedly beyond the reach of most humans. Any person who reads what Plato actually said about love would never, in a skinny minute, allow him to babysit or preside in a classroom of young children. If you doubt that, just read Phaedrus and the Symposium carefully and forget that this guy is supposed to be the arbiter of philosophical values, the author of great poetry and whatnot. The words he put into the mouth of Socrates just boggle the mind. Like Socrates, the guy who gave his life for Truth with a capital T, would ever have been interested in this garbage? Or ‘ravished’ by it? What is utterly soul-chilling is that Plato did this to his teacher, cast him in the role of lending authority to filth. Not only are women physically excluded in Plato’s world, but the goddess who supposedly inspires his rapturous pedophilia (for it can’t be called anything else) has no woman as an ancestor and is therefore, what? Apparently, barbarians are unable to see the superiority of pederasty which is equated with philosophy and gymnastics and together all three somehow stand against tyranny? Men who don’t go after pubescent boys are “poor in spirit”?! We are next told that “so great is the encouragement which all the world gives a boy-lover or lover-boy-child” that his raptures excuse literally any anti-social act or absurd and immature behavior. It sounds as though he is defending the psychopathy of Alcibiades. And, even though the lover of boys, or the boy choosing a lover, can go through all kinds of concatenations in the process of swearing and proving eternal devotion, we learn that this doesn’t have to be sincere! But darn those parents who object to their children being sex objects for perverts:

But when parents forbid their sons to talk with their lovers, and place them under a tutor’s care, who is appointed to see to these things, and their companions and equals cast in their teeth anything of the sort which they may observe, and their elders refuse to silence the reprovers and do not rebuke them – any one who reflects on all this will, on the contrary, think that we hold these practices to be most disgraceful.[21]

In other words, Athenian society wasn’t exactly as welcoming to Plato’s ‘philosophy’ as he wanted it to be. Shame on those bad people who want to protect their children from predators! In case you think I’m quoting out of context, read it yourself. And sure, you will read that “the soul of the young boy should be loved more than the body”, but it is entirely unclear how that is accomplished since the mode is purely sexual. He talks out of both sides of his mouth at once. 

As for fidelity, it is clear from the literature that this was not what actually happened in these pedophilic relationships. They discarded their beloved children the instant they began to look like men!  So much for true, lasting, “Platonic love.”

It seems that, toward the end of his life, Plato concluded that the noblest love denies any bodily contact. I suppose that was an easy enough conclusion to come to once his libido had run out. Then, he finds any sexual exchange to be unworthy of a philosopher. In short, after a lifetime of pederasty, abusing hundreds, if not thousands of young boys, Plato finally denied the flesh. And for over two thousand years our civilization has been speaking in awed and hushed tones about this guy? And what is astonishing is the fact that when Plato talks about love, he is talking about pederasty exclusively and women are not even a part of the picture! The question is, of course, what effect has this message had on our society as a whole? It seems to me that the influence has been profound, particularly since Christianity was shaped by the influences of Plato in its formative stages. And the result is that the problem in our world is not homosexuality, a private matter between adults, but anti-sexuality, that is, the obviation of women in toto, and we have Plato to thank for this. Thanks to Plato, by way of Christianity, the chief effort has been to inculcate disgust toward sex in general, and women in particular.

Inspired by Plato, St. Augustine found the sexual organs to be shameful and denounced those parts as the loathsome instruments of original sin. 

How St Augustine made Sex Evil

Sexual desire was evil and horrible. He scorned humanity because we are born “inter faeces et urinam”. What is more, he agonized over this stuff almost endlessly! Then, over the centuries, the tendency to define as ‘the flesh’ all that is trivial, evil or vile, continued to grow and develop, particularly in relation to women. Those rascally guys who wrote Malleus Maleficarum, the Witches’ Hammer[22], made believers out of everyone when their inquisition road-show came to town: woman, in contrast to man, is by nature a vicious liar, the embodiment of fraud and iniquity:

What else is woman but a foe to friendship, and unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature painted with false colors!

Sounds rather like the other side of Plato’s coin, eh? What he didn’t write in his dialogues, but wished he could have! Nowadays, things are even worse, even with the changing of attitudes, because now the sex pendulum has swung to the extreme opposite and sex is completely divorced from love or any sense of spiritual, emotional, or psychological nobility.

Additionally, when one combs through Plato’s formulations of the physical world – his ‘natural philosophy’ – it sounds like little more than the book of Genesis in fancier words. In fact, I’m sure that Plato influenced the writers of the Pentateuch considerably.[23] He probably did plagiarize. He probably did utilize comedy to convey a few truths, and he probably wasn’t such a great genius at anything. But he managed to stay alive and tell a story about cosmic destruction that has survived over two thousand years; and that’s something. Even if he added so much nonsense to it that generations of believers have been searching for a truly mythical Atlantis that never existed in the terms that Plato described it at all.

Certainly, there were ancient peoples with significant knowledge and abilities: the megaliths that blanket the Earth give mute testimony to that. But just as the Mesopotamian empires, and the later Roman Empire, could be vast political bodies of extraordinary complexity, though not based on high material technology as we understand it, so were the more ancient empires.  It was based on a completely different interpretation of the Laws of Nature and that explains how there can be, at one and the same time, examples of extraordinary construction abilities, craftsmanship and artistic expression, side-by-side with what we consider to be primitive stone tools and weapons.

What was the ultimate meaning of it? As we read above in the discussion of Archelaus, he was called “The Physicist” to mark the fact that with him, natural philosophy came to an end as soon as Socrates introduced ethics. I think we can come to a somewhat different view of things now. First of all, I suspect that Socrates was executed because of his teachings about natural philosophy based on his own understanding, as a “Delian diver”, of the works of Heraclitus and Pythagoras.

Secondly, what we notice overall is that most of the original so-called philosophers didn’t seem to be very bright about ‘natural philosophy’ but were rather good at being put in charge of growing colonies, which suggests that their philosophy had a different objective than explaining the order of the universe. Their ideas are just barely cogent enough to be sold to masses of ignorant people and that is probably what they were designed to be used for. The sky was quieting down, and perhaps there was awareness of terrible things that had been done in the past to kings and ruling classes as a result of the popular perception that the gods were angry. And so, things needed to be put on a different footing. Thus ‘wise men’ were put in charge of colonies, made laws, justified those laws based on ‘cosmic principles’ that they were busy making up, which definitely separated men from the gods, thus putting the cosmos into an order where nothing ‘up there’ could ever have anything to do with things ‘down here’.

Thirdly, with the rise of the idea of natural philosophy, that things needed explaining, some really bright people turned their minds to the study of the world and ancient knowledge, coming to some rather different conclusions; people like Pherecydes and Pythagoras and especially Heraclitus. Anaxagoras got into trouble pushing this idea of ‘finding out the truth’ and so did his student, Socrates, and both lost their lives for it. I don’t, for a minute, think that natural philosophy died with Socrates; rather it was Plato who buried it so that he could stay alive during times that were not exactly as “golden” as we have been told. He enjoyed his popularity and built a satisfying life for himself by twisting and re-interpreting the work of giant intellects. And then, when he began to get older, when the fires of his flesh began to cool, when the tenor of the times changed somewhat and his own reputation demanded of him something more, he wrote the dialogues detailing the story of Atlantis. He was honest enough to put the discussion in the mouths of those who probably did discuss periodic cataclysms and cleansings, though he felt the necessity of putting the Athenians in the position of the good guys, and casting the bad guys ‘out there’ beyond the Pillars of Hercules. There may even have been information accessible to him that there was a vast continent across that ocean that suffered the most terrible destruction imaginable, the same event to which the Carolina Bays bear witness. But beyond that, I doubt that there was much more, and so the name Atlantis, and the description of it and its people and lifestyle, were purely figments of his imagination or based on legends and stories of the Hyperboreans. The line of philosophers who followed Plato were thus lost without the keys.

---

[1] A peripatetic philosopher and historian, whose biographies of famous people are frequently referred to by Diogenes Laërtius and Athenaeus. The Peripatetic school was a school of philosophy in Ancient Greece. Its teachings derived from its founder, the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, and Peripatetic is a name given to his followers.

[2] Four minae was the average annual wage of an agricultural worker.

[3] Schmitz (1867) ‘Alcimus’, in William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1, p. 102.

[4] Alcimus, quoted by Diogenes Laertius, III. 17-19.

[5] An Athenian general active in the first half of the 4th century BC. Demosthenes described him as one of the most successful commanders Athens ever had.  The Boeotian War was fought between 378 and 371 BC between Thebes and Sparta with Athens joining the Thebans.

[6] Diogenes Laertius.

[7] Yeomans, op. cit.

[8] Aristotle, Meteorologica, Book I.

[9] Seargent (2009) The Greatest Comets in History: Broom Stars and Celestial Scimitars.

[10] Caven (1990) Dionysios I: War-Lord of Sicily.

[11] Ellis (1998) Imagining Atlantis.

[12] Forsythe (1980) Atlantis: the Making of a Myth.

[13] Taylor (1928) A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus.

[14] Cornford (1937) Before and after Socrates, p. 2.

[15] Some scholars believe that it is not the Critias of the Thirty Tyrants who appears in this dialogue, but his grandfather, who is also named Critias.

[16] Rosenmeyer (1949) ‘The family of Critias’.

[17] One of Plato’s later dialogues.

[18] Translation by Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893)

[19] Plato, Timaeus, translated by Jowett (2012).

[20] Ice core, peat bog and tree-ring dates combined.

[21] Plato, The Symposium, ibid., pp. 541-94.

[22] The Malleus Maleficarum is a treatise on the prosecution of witches, written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer, a German Catholic clergyman.

[23] Cf:  the works of Russell Gmirkin, Philippe Wajdenbaur, Jan Weselius, and others.

P.S.1. (A.J. 17-08-23) Updated "Photon states on loops". In particular added Sec. 5 - Uniqueness of the Pryce operator

P.S.2 (A.J.)

FINAL PROGRAM

Neuroscience Needs a Revolution to Understand Consciousness

Summer Symposium at CIHS Campus, 701 Garden View Court

August 18-20, 2023 – Encinitas, CA

Sponsored by California Institute for Human Science

Center for Consciousness Studies

Registration Required

INTRO

Despite vast detailed knowledge of the brain, neuroscience cannot 1) explain consciousness, memory, binding nor real time conscious action, 2) effectively treat Alzheimer’s or other brain disorders, nor 3) define our place in the universe. Why not? Oversimplified cartoon neurons.

'AI' has reinforced the notion of the brain as a complex computer of simple, empty, ‘cartoon’ neurons based on 1950s physiology, processing solely by surface membranes, synaptic transmissions and firings as “bit-like' units in frequencies up to 100 hertz. But deeper, faster, coherent and quantum non-local information processes in cytoskeletal microtubules inside neurons regulate neuronal-level functions. Over the past 10 years, Anirban Bandyopadhyay has discovered coherent kilohertz, megahertz, gigahertz and terahertz resonance vibrations in microtubules, with megahertz and gigahertz detectable from human scalp. Aarat Kalra, Jack Tuszynski, Travis Craddock and others have shown quantum optical effects in microtubules are inhibited by anesthetics which selectively block consciousness. The Penrose-Hameroff ‘Orch OR’ theory proposes consciousness depends on ‘orchestrated’ (‘Orch’) quantum superpositions leading to Penrose ‘objective reductions’ (‘OR’, wavefunction self-collapses) in brain microtubules, connecting to fundamental spacetime geometry. Orch OR has more explanatory power, connection to biology, and experimental validation than all ‘neuroscientific’ theories based on low frequency, oversimplified cartoon neurons combined.

Neuroscience needs a revolution inward, to deeper, faster quantum processes in microtubules to understand consciousness and treat its disorders.

Thomas Brophy, CIHS          Stuart Hameroff, CCS

P.S.3. (A.J 20-08-23) During the last two days I have had an extensive discussion of my notes on conformal group and photon's localization with a friend (theoretical physicist from Marseille), who visited us.. He has made hundreds of important critical comments. The result is: I will have to rewrite everything. And, at the end,  to add torsion, because torsion will make it spicy! Guided by my friend's comments I have found a very relevant paper:

Xavier Bekaert - "Particules de masse nulle dans des représentations exotiques du groupe de Poincaré" Habilitation Thesis 2010

and also this one:

Marco Di Mauro, Salvatore Esposito, Adele Naddeo, "A look inside Feynman's route to gravitation", (2021)