Plato's Forms, Mathematics and Astronomy by Theokritos Kouremenos

Author:Theokritos Kouremenos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

2.6Astronomy in the Epinomis

The final part of the Epinomis begins with the Athenian stranger preparing to answer the question addressed earlier in the discussion (973a1–b6): what must one learn to be considered wise? He begins by equating platonically goodness with a wisdom acquired through systematic education and, before he tries to describe clearly to his codiscussant this wisdom as it has been revealed to him in his exhaustive search for it, he says that the nature of this wisdom is perplexing because the greatest part of virtue is not rightly practiced: for mortals there is no greater part of virtue than piety, but even the best people ignore this (988e6–989b1). Earlier on (984d3–8), the Athenian stranger has identified the celestial objects with visible gods, the greatest and most honorable ones, waving aside politely the traditional Greek gods such as Zeus and Hera (that the celestial objects are gods is already stated in 981b3–982a3).143 Thus the intimate connection between the wisdom sought after here and virtue, whose greatest part is piety, suggests that both are to be found in astronomy. The identification of the wisdom at issue with astronomy is made explicit shortly after this wisdom’s implicit equation with piety. The Athenian stranger warns that “it is bizarre to hear this, but the name by which we at any rate call this wisdom, astronomy, would never be accepted by people, unfamiliar as they are with these matters and ignorant of the fact that the wisest person must be a true astronomer: one who is an astronomer not in the sense of Hesiod and all the rest like him, a student of morning and evening risings and settings of the fixed stars, but one who has studied the seven of the eight periodic motions, the zodiacal motions of the planets, the sun and the moon, each of them undergone along its own circle in such a manner that no ordinary people but only those of a marvelous nature can ever easily understand” (989e1–990b3).144

Next follows a short discussion of four branches of mathematics whose study is propedeutically required for one’s becoming wise and good, equivalently a competent astronomer: arithmetic, plane geometry, stereometry, and harmonics (990b5–991b4). These are only four of the five propedeutics to philosophy in the seventh book of Plato’s Republic, the fifth, astronomy, missing exactly because it has usurped the place of philosophy.145 Indeed, the author of the Epinomis views arithmetic as the study of the numbers themselves, not of those numbers which have bodies, in an unmistakable allusion to Plato’s own description of arithmetic as a propedeutic to philosophy (525d5–8). Philip of Opus, moreover, employs the term geometry for plane geometry following Plato’s usage in the discussion of stereometry as a propedeutic to philosophy (528a6–10 and d1–10). He also notes that this term geometry is ridiculous (γελοῖον), recalling the adverb used by Plato in his discussion of geometry as a propedeutic to philosophy for the ridiculousness of the geometers’ talk about squaring, applying areas and adding, which gives the false

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