Who Discovered America?
As I work my way through the various texts of Plato it never ceases to amaze me how close they were to many of the ideas and knowledge we have today which were attributed to people much later than Plato. There are always debates about how much of Plato's texts actually accurately portrayed Socratic ideas and how much of the text was simply his own ideas. To me, this is not the important thing. It is somewhat irrelevant. What is relevant to me is the fact that certain ideas existed around 400BC and that even these were probably in place prior to this date. But further investigation involves multiple levels of inaccuracy in my original beliefs.
Lets start with the earth. Socrates describes the shape of the earth as a sphere in one of Plato's texts. He states the earth is not flat. There are two points of interest in this. The first is that I was surprised that this was the view (I will refrain from saying known) as far back as 400BC. Why am I impressed by this? It turns out that my amazement is actually borne out of a myth. My understanding was that people believed the earth was flat still in the middle ages. It turns out that this is just an urban myth. I cannot recall why I have this view but it is not uncommon and probably we have simply been ill educated on this matter.
Another discovery of interest occurs in Plato's Timaeus (Penguin Classics, Desmond Lee translation). Plato is writing about a story being told by Critias which itself was a story being told by his grandfather about a story told by Solon about a story told by a guy in Egypt (this is not atypical of the multiple depths of stories in his texts).
The context is that he is relating the story of Atlantis and how it came to be destroyed. The relevance of this is not so much the truth or otherwise of Atlantis but the description of the possible method of its destruction.
I will quote the text. "There have been and will be many different calamities to destroy mankind, the greater of them by fire and water, lesser ones by countless other means. Your own story of how Phaethon, child of the sun, harnessed his father's chariot, but was unable to guide it along his father's course and so burnt up things on the earth and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt, is a mythical version of the truth that there is at long intervals a variation in the course of the heavenly bodies and a consequent widespread destruction by fire of things on the earth."
I am no scholar (understatement) on these matters but at a shallow level this seems to be saying two interesting things. One is that there is acknowledgment here about the symbolism of the gods and such events described by such stories which adds weight to the other debate about the comparison of new testament writings being based on Greek texts and also that these should not be taken literally. I always assumed the Greeks actually believed these stories rather than treat them symbolically.
The second point is that they appear to recognize the effects and reasons for meteor collisions with earth and the devastation which comes from them.
Later on in the same text about the story of Atlantis they relate the position of Atlantis. Again, the text is below.
"There was an island opposite the strait which you call (so you say) the Pillars of Heracles, an island larger than Libya and Asia combined; from it travelers could in those days reach the other islands, and from them the whole opposite continent which surrounds what can truly be called the ocean. For the sea within the strait we were talking about is the like a lake with a narrow entrance; the outer ocean is the real ocean and the land which entirely surrounds it is properly termed the continent."
The pillars (depending upon who you ask) appear to be across the straits of Gibraltar. Which places Atlantis west of there in the Atlantic. Again, ignoring Atlantis story, the rest of text refers to the surrounding continent of the ocean. The key of course is what is Plato referring to here? The choices are Europe, which would have been known about clearly then and Africa. The other continents were of course America in the west of the ocean. So could we be seeing the early discovery of America? This seems unlikely given navigation and ship technology of the times and he is probably referring to parts of Africa. But that is not clear from the texts.
Whatever the answer the point is clearly that many of the things we know about in our world have been known about for a long long time. Our current view of the world and events may not be accurate and our education which we prize greatly in this country may be based on very weak ground. We are happy that we think we know a lot, but in reality we may actually know far less that we actually think.
Lets start with the earth. Socrates describes the shape of the earth as a sphere in one of Plato's texts. He states the earth is not flat. There are two points of interest in this. The first is that I was surprised that this was the view (I will refrain from saying known) as far back as 400BC. Why am I impressed by this? It turns out that my amazement is actually borne out of a myth. My understanding was that people believed the earth was flat still in the middle ages. It turns out that this is just an urban myth. I cannot recall why I have this view but it is not uncommon and probably we have simply been ill educated on this matter.
Another discovery of interest occurs in Plato's Timaeus (Penguin Classics, Desmond Lee translation). Plato is writing about a story being told by Critias which itself was a story being told by his grandfather about a story told by Solon about a story told by a guy in Egypt (this is not atypical of the multiple depths of stories in his texts).
The context is that he is relating the story of Atlantis and how it came to be destroyed. The relevance of this is not so much the truth or otherwise of Atlantis but the description of the possible method of its destruction.
I will quote the text. "There have been and will be many different calamities to destroy mankind, the greater of them by fire and water, lesser ones by countless other means. Your own story of how Phaethon, child of the sun, harnessed his father's chariot, but was unable to guide it along his father's course and so burnt up things on the earth and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt, is a mythical version of the truth that there is at long intervals a variation in the course of the heavenly bodies and a consequent widespread destruction by fire of things on the earth."
I am no scholar (understatement) on these matters but at a shallow level this seems to be saying two interesting things. One is that there is acknowledgment here about the symbolism of the gods and such events described by such stories which adds weight to the other debate about the comparison of new testament writings being based on Greek texts and also that these should not be taken literally. I always assumed the Greeks actually believed these stories rather than treat them symbolically.
The second point is that they appear to recognize the effects and reasons for meteor collisions with earth and the devastation which comes from them.
Later on in the same text about the story of Atlantis they relate the position of Atlantis. Again, the text is below.
"There was an island opposite the strait which you call (so you say) the Pillars of Heracles, an island larger than Libya and Asia combined; from it travelers could in those days reach the other islands, and from them the whole opposite continent which surrounds what can truly be called the ocean. For the sea within the strait we were talking about is the like a lake with a narrow entrance; the outer ocean is the real ocean and the land which entirely surrounds it is properly termed the continent."
The pillars (depending upon who you ask) appear to be across the straits of Gibraltar. Which places Atlantis west of there in the Atlantic. Again, ignoring Atlantis story, the rest of text refers to the surrounding continent of the ocean. The key of course is what is Plato referring to here? The choices are Europe, which would have been known about clearly then and Africa. The other continents were of course America in the west of the ocean. So could we be seeing the early discovery of America? This seems unlikely given navigation and ship technology of the times and he is probably referring to parts of Africa. But that is not clear from the texts.
Whatever the answer the point is clearly that many of the things we know about in our world have been known about for a long long time. Our current view of the world and events may not be accurate and our education which we prize greatly in this country may be based on very weak ground. We are happy that we think we know a lot, but in reality we may actually know far less that we actually think.
posted by So long and thanks for all the fish at
12:19 pm
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