Chapter 2 Mathematization in Plato’s Timaeus

In: The Legacy of Plato's Timaeus
Author:
Barbara M. Sattler
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Type:
Chapter
Pages:
53–76
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004705838_003

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Abstract

This first chapter gives an overview of the way in which Plato employs mathematical structures in the Timaeus in order to demonstrate that the phenomenal world displays a substantial degree of intelligibility. However, Plato’s use of mathematics to explain physics also leads to two central problems: first, for some assumptions about the physical world, mathematics is the driving force, without any backing from the phenomenal realm; and, second, arithmetic and geometry seem to be bound up with different ontological realms in the Timaeus: while arithmetic is closely tied to the World Soul and time, geometry is employed for the elemental traces, the bodies formed from them, and the space-like receptacle. In order to see whether Plato presents us nevertheless with a unified mathematization of the cosmos, this chapter subsequently investigates Plato’s usage of proportion theory in the Timaeus. It will be shown that it is used not only as a basic structure for the set-up of the universe as a whole, but also as one that strongly unifies different constituents: it allows the four elements to be formed tightly into the World Body, as well as Sameness, Difference, and Being to be mixed into a unified, intelligible kind of basis, out of which the World Soul can be formed. In the same way, proportion theory is used for the set-up of human physiology and psychology.

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The Legacy of Plato's Timaeus

Cosmology, Music, Medicine, and Architecture from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century

Series:  Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, Volume: 353
Cover The Legacy of Plato's <i>Timaeus</i>
E-Book ISBN:
9789004705838
Publisher:
Brill
Print Publication Date:
16 Dec 2024
Front Matter
Chapter 1 Introduction: from Plato’s Text to the Beginnings of Modern Science – towards a New Understanding of the Disciplinary Inheritance of Plato’s Timaeus
Part 1 The Timaeus and its Reception in Late Antiquity
Part 2 The Medieval Timaeus
Part 3 The Timaeus in the Renaissance
Back Matter

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