Chapter 11 Saving the Phenomena: Geometric Atomism and the Timaeus in the Renaissance

In: The Legacy of Plato's Timaeus
Author:
Guy Claessens
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Chapter
Pages:
321–341
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004705838_012

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Abstract

In the Timaeus, Plato explains how the four elements are not the most elementary building blocks of sensible bodies. Fire, earth, water, and air are in fact three-dimensional solids composed of even more elementary triangles. This geometrical infrastructure accounts for a physical superstructure: inter-elemental transformations and sensible properties are explained by means of underlying mathematical configurations. Of course, the central question is how the relation between both levels of reality should be understood. Does Plato here defend a geometrical atomism – as some claim – or is his geometrical account merely a hypothetical exercise in saving the phenomena? This chapter examines how Renaissance readers of the Timaeus, such as Bessarion, Ficino, Fox-Morcillo, Beni, and Mazzoni, tried to answer these questions. It aims to show how the atomist interpretation was either downplayed as a hypothetical construct or defended on the authority of Neoplatonic philosophers such as Proclus and Simplicius.

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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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