DWill wrote:According to Plato, though, wouldn't our modern science still represent bungling around in the Cave? Certainty to Plato rested in the realm of forms or ideas, the only level deserving the name of philosophy. Empiricism appears to be a much lower level. Apprehending the form of the Good was the philosopher's goal, which isn't something we'd say can be achieved by science. Carl Sagan had this to say about Plato and science: " He (Plato) believed that ideas were far more real than the natural world. He advised the astronomers not to waste their time observing the stars and planets. It was better, he believed, just to think about them. Plato expressed hostility to observation and experiment. He taught contempt for the real world and disdain for the practical application of scientific knowledge. Plato's followers succeeded in extinguishing the light of science and experiment that had been kindled by Democritus and the other Ionians." (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato#Criticism)
What do you think about that? Science seems unavoidably Aristotelian rather than Platonic.
All of that comes from a really bad popular misreading of Plato. It is like the cynical line 'I have seen Plato's cups and table but not his cupness or tableness'. It is so typical that an astronomer such as Sagan would imagine he has a clear understanding of Plato when he has probably barely read any of the dialogues, and has simply absorbed popular Aristotelian prejudices.
For a start, Plato did not have a 'theory of forms'. Forms is a really bad modern English Aristotelian translation of Plato's term "idea". We find this continual tendency, which Plato criticised in his dialogue The Sophist, for crude thinkers to say if we cannot see and touch something it is not real, whereas enlightened thinkers recognise that truth is abstract and unchanging.
There is much genuine debate within modern mathematics about Plato, notably on whether numbers are real. This is quite an obscure problem, but becomes serious in some branches of higher mathematics, as discussed in the excellent book
Is God a Mathematician by Mario Livio, who suggests that the true Platonic view is that numbers are discovered, whereas the false Aristotelian line promoted by crude empiricists is that numbers are invented.
Let's consider the theory of evolution. It is not something you can see or touch, and exists solely as intelligible and eternal. The laws of evolution do not change with time and place. As Richard Dawkins has said, a prediction he would make about extra terrestrial life is that it would develop in accord with the laws of evolution that we have discovered here on earth. On Plato's divided line, the theory of evolution, like other general concepts in science, sits on the intelligible knowledge side, not on the side of opinion and belief. The central power of evolution is found in natural mathematical algorithms regarding evolutionarily sustainable strategies.
Plato's theory that the idea of the good is the highest point of intelligible knowledge is central to his concept of the philosopher king. Part of the point here is that we do not really learn what is good and bad from the evidence of our senses, which provide a swirling mess of opinion. Instead, the idea of the good is primarily intelligible, discerned from careful and systematic study of ideas, provided as conceptual knowledge. It is quite rare for anyone to have the objectivity and capacity to explore such material in depth.
Kant said percepts without concepts are blind, concepts without percepts are empty. What this means is that empiricism (sense perception and intuition) lacks an organising framework to explain what we see. Such a framework requires rational concepts (thoughts and ideas) that order the mess of perception into a coherent story. The highest idea for Kant is duty, reflecting Plato's idea of the good.
For a Platonic and Kantian approach to evolution, it is incontrovertible that if we define good as whatever conduces to human flourishing, and then do the good, then humans will flourish, barring unforeseeable catastrophe. Kant said we have a categorical imperative to treat people as ends, not as means. This sense of compassionate humanitarian duty indicates how abstract moral philosophy can be relevant to understanding how human civilization can evolve.