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previous: Chapter 23 This webpage reproduces a chapter of A History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston, S. J. as reprinted by Image Books — Doubleday New York • London • Toronto • Sydney • Auckland 1993 The text, and illustrations except as noted, are in the public domain. next: Chapter 25

Part III: Plato

 p244  Chapter XXIV
Physics of Plato

The physical theories of Plato are contained in the Timaeus, Plato's only "scientific" dialogue. It was probably written when Plato was about seventy years old, and was designed to form the first work of a trilogy, the Timaeus, the Critias, and the Hermocrates.​1 The Timaeus recounts the formation of the material world and the birth of man and the animals; the Critias tells how primitive Athenian defeated the invaders from mythical Atlantis, and then was itself overwhelmed by flood and earthquake, and it is conjectured that the Hermocrates was to deal with the rebirth of culture in Greece, ending with Plato's suggestions for future reform. Thus the Utopian State or Socratic Republic​2 would be represented in the Critias as something realised in the past, while practical reforms for the future would be proposed in the Hermocrates. The Timaeus was actually written, the Critias breaks off before completion, and was left unfinished, while the Hermocrates was never composed at all. It has been very reasonably suggested that Plato, conscious of his advancing age, dropped the idea of completing his elaborate historical romance and incorporated in the Laws (Books 3 ff.) much of what he had wanted to say in the Hermocrates.​3

The Timaeus was thus written by way of prefect to two politico-ethical dialogues, so that it would be hardly correct to represent Plato as having suddenly conceived an intense interest in natural science in his old age. It is probably true that he was influenced by the growing scientific interest in the Academy, and there can be little doubt that he felt the necessity of saying something about the material world, with a view to explaining its relation to the Forms; but there is no real reason for supposing that the centre of Plato's interest underwent a radical shift from ethical, political and metaphysical themes to questions of natural science. As a matter of fact, he says expressly in the Timaeus that an account of the material world cannot be more than "likely," that we should not expect it to be exact or even altogether  p245 self-consistent,​4 phrases which clearly indicate that in Plato's eyes Physics could never be an exact science, a science in the true sense. Nevertheless, some account of the material universe was called off for by the peculiar character of the Platonic character of Ideas. While the Pythagoreans held that things are numbers, Plato held that they participate in numbers (returning his dualism), so that me might justly be expected to proffer some explanation from the physical standpoint of how this participation comes to be.

Plato doubtless had another important reason for writing the Timaeus, namely to exhibit the organised Cosmos as the work of Intelligence and to show that man partakes of both worlds, the intelligible and the sensible. He is convinced that "mind orders all things," and will not agree "when an ingenious individual (Democritus?) declares that all is disorder";​5 on the contrary, soul is "the oldest and most divine of all things," and it is "mind which ordered the universe."​6 In the Timaeus, therefore, Plato presents a picture of the intelligent ordering of all things by Mind, and exhibits the divine origin of man's immortal soul. (Just as the entire universe comprises a dualism of the intelligible and the eaten on the one hand, and the sensible and fleeting on the other, so man, the microcosm, comprises a dualism of eternal soul, belonging to the sphere of Reality, and body which passes and perishes.) This exhibition of the world according to the ideal pattern constitutes an apt preface to the proposed extended treatment of the State, which should be rationally formed and organised according to the ideal pattern not left to the play of irrational and "chance" causes.

2. If Plato thought of his physical theories as a "likely account" (εἰκότες λόγοι), are we thereby compelled to treat the whole work as "Myth"? First of all, the theory of Timaeus, whether myth or not, must be taken as Plato's theories: the present writer entirely agrees with Professor Cornford's rejection of Professor A. E. Taylor's notion that the Timaeus is a "fake" on Plato's part, a statement of "fifth‑century Pythagoreanism, ""a deliberate attempt to amalgamate Pythagorean religion and mathematics with Empedoclean biology,"​7 so that "Plato was not likely to feel himself responsible for the details of any of his speaker's  p246 theories." Apart from the inherent improbability of such a fake on the part of a great and original philosopher, already advanced in years, how is it that Aristotle and Theophrastus and other ancients, as Cornford points out, have left us no hint as to the faked character of the work? If this was its real character, they cannot all have been ignorant of the fact; and can we suppose that, if they were aware of such an interesting fact, they would all have remained absolutely silent on the point? It is really too much to ask us to believe that the true character of the Timaeus was first revealed to the world in the twentieth century. Plato certainly borrowed from other philosophers (particularly the Pythagoreans), but the theories of Timaeus are Plato's own, whether borrowed or not.

In the second place, although the theories put into the mouth of Timaeus are Plato's own theories, they constitute, as we have seen, a "likely account," and should not be taken as meant to be an exact and scientific account — for the very simple fact that Plato did not consider such an exact scientific account to be possible. He not only says that we should remember that we "are only human," and so should accept "the likely story and look for nothing further"​8 — words which might imply that it is just human frailty which renders true natural science impossible; but he goes further than that, since he expressly refers this impossibility of an exact natural science to "the nature of the subject." An account of what is only a likeness "will itself be but likely": "what becoming is to being, that is belief to truth."​9 The theories are put forward, therefore, as "likely" or probable; but that does not mean that they are "mythical" in the sense of being consciously designed to symbolise a more exact theory that, for some reason or other, Plato is unwilling to impart. It may be that this or that feature of the Timaeus is conscious symbolism, but we have to argue each case on its own merits, and are not justified in simply dismissing the whole of the Platonic Physics as Myth. It is one thing to say: "I do not think an exact account of the material world possible, but the following account is as likely or more likely than any other"; and it is another thing to say: "I put forward the following account as a mythical, symbolic and pictorial expression of an exact account which I propose to keep to myself." Of course, if we care to call a confessedly "probable" account "Myth," then the Timaeus is certainly Myth; but it is  p247 not Myth (in its entirety at least) if by Myth" you mean a symbolic and pictorial representation of a truth clearly perceived by the author but kept to himself. Plato means to do the best he can, and says so.

3. Plato sets out to give an account of the generation of the world, The sensible world is becoming, and "that which becomes must necessarily become through the agency of some cause."​10 The agent in question is the divine Craftsman or Demiurge. He "took over"​11 all that was in discordant and unordered motion, and brought it into order, forming the material world according to an eternal and ideal pattern, and fashioning it into "a living creature with soul and reason"​12 after the model of the ideal Living Creature, i.e. the Form that contains within itself the Forms of "the heavenly race of gods, the winged things which fly through the air, all that dwells in the water, and all that goes on foot on the dry earth."​13 As there is but one ideal living Creature, the Demiurge made but one world.​14

4. What was the motive of the Demiurge in so acting? The Demiurge is good and "desired that all things should come as near as possible to being like himself," judging that order is better than disorder, and fashioning everything for the best.​15 He was limited by the material at his disposal, but he did the best he could with it, making it "as excellent and perfect as possible."

5. How are we to regard the figure of the Demiurge? He must at least represent the divine Reason which is operative in the world; but he is not a Creator‑God. It is clear from the Timaeus that the Demiurge "took over" a pre‑existing material and did his best with it: he is certainly not said to have created it out of nothing. "The generation of this cosmos," says Plato, "was a mixed result of the combination of Necessity and Reason,"​16 Necessity being also called the Errant Cause. The word "Necessity" naturally suggests to us the reign of fixed law, but this is not precisely what Plato meant. If we take the Democritean or Epicurean view of the universe, according to which the world is built up out of atoms without the aid of Intelligence, we have an example of what Plato meant by Necessity, i.e. the purposeless, that which was not formed by Intelligence. If we also bear in mind that in the Atomistic System the world owes its origin to the "chance" collision of atoms, we can more easily see how Plato  p248 could associate Necessity with Chance or the Errant Cause. For us these may seem to be opposed notions, but for Plato they were akin, since they both denote that in which Intelligence and conscious Purpose have no share. Thus it is that in the Laws Plato can speak of those who declare that the world originated"not by the action of mind, or of any God, or from art, but by nature and chance" (φύσει καὶ τύχῃ) or of necessity (ἐξ᾽ ἀνάγκης).​17 Such a view of the universe is characterised by Aristotle​18 as the ascription of the world to Spontaneity (τὸ αὐτόματον), though inasmuch as motion is due to the previous motion of another atom, one could also say that the universe is due to Necessity. Thus the three notions of "spontaneously" and "by chance" and "of necessity" were allied notions. The elements, if considered as left to themselves, as it were, proceed spontaneously or by chance or necessarily, according to the point of view taken; but they do not subserve purpose unless the operation of Reason is introduced. Plato can, therefore, speak of Reason "persuading" necessity, i.e. making the"blind" elements subserve design and conscious purpose, even though the material is partly intractable and cannot be fully subordinated to the operation of Reason.

The Demiurge was, then, no Creator‑God. Moreover, Plato most probably never thought of "chaos" as ever existing in actual fact, in the sense of there having been an historical period when the world was simply a disorderly chaos. At any rate this was the tradition of the Academy with but very few dissentient voices (Plutarch and Atticus). It is true that Aristotle takes the account of the world's formation in the Timaeus as an account of formation in time (or at least criticises it as so interpreted), but he expressly mentions that the members of the Academy declared that in describing the world's formation they were merely doing so for purposes of exposition, in order to understand the universe, without supposing that it ever really came into existence.​19 Among Neo‑Platonists Proclus gave this interpretation​20 and Simplicius.​21 If this interpretation is correct, then the Demiurge is still less like a Creator‑God: he is a symbol of the Intelligence operative in the world, the King of heaven and earth of the Philebus.​22 Moreover, it is to be noted that in the Timaeus itself Plato tthe"it is hard to find the maker and father of the universe, and having found him it is impossible to speak of him  p249 to all."​23 But if the Demiurge is a symbolic figure, it may also be that the sharp distinction implied in the Timaeus between the Demiurge and the Forms is only a pictorial representation. In treating of the Forms I inclined towards what might be called a Neo‑Platonic interpretation of the relation between Mind, the Forms and the One, but I admitted that it might be that the Forms were Ideas of Mind or Intelligence. In any case it is not necessary to suppose that the picture of the Demiurge as a Divine Craftsman outside the world and also entirely distinct from the Forms is to be taken literally.

6. What did the Demiurge "take over"? Plato speaks of the "Receptacle — as it were, the nurse — of all Becoming."​24 Later he describes this as "Space, which is everlasting, not admitting destruction; providing a situation for all things which come into being, but itself apprehended without the senses by a sort of bastard reasoning, and hardly an object of belief."​25 It appears, therefore, that Space is not that out of which the primary elements are made, but that in which they appear. It is true that Plato makes a comparison with gold out of which a man moulds figures;​26 but he goes on to say that Space "never departs at all from its own character. For it is ever receiving all things, and never in any way whatsoever takes on any character which is like any of the things that enter it."​27 It is probable, then, that Space or the Receptacle is not the matter out of which the primary qualities are made, but that in which they appear.

Plato remarks that the four elements (earth, air, fire and water) cannot be spoken of as substances, since they are constantly changing: "for they slip away and do not wait to be described as 'that' or 'this' or by any phrase that exhibits them as having permanent being."​28 They are rather to be termed qualities, which make their appearance in the Receptacle, "in which (ἐν ᾧ) all of them are always coming to be, making their appearance and again vanishing out of it."​29 The Demiurge thus "took over" (a) the Receptacle, "a kind of thing invisible and characterless, all‑receiving, partaking in some very puzzling way of the intelligible and very hard to apprehend,"​30 and (b) the primary qualities, which appear in the Receptacle and which the Demiurge fashions or builds up after the model of the Forms.

7. The Demiurge proceeds to confer geometrical shapes on the  p250 four primary elements. Plato only takes things as far back as triangles, choosing the right-angled isosceles (half-square) and the right-angled scalene or half-equilateral, from which are to be built up the square and equilateral faces of the solids.​31 (If anyone asks why Plato makes a beginning with triangles, he answers that "the principles yet more road, God knows and such men as are dear to Him"​32 In the Laws​33 he indicates that it is only when the third dimension is reached that things become "perceptible to sense." It is sufficient, therefore, for purposes of exposition to start with the surface or second dimension, and leave the remoter principles alone.) The solids are then constructed, the cube being assigned to earth (as the most immobile or hard to move), the pyramid to fir (as the "most mobile," having "the sharpest cutting edges and the sharpest points in every direction"), the octahedron to air, and the icosahedron to water.​34 These bodies are so small that no single one of them is perceptible by us, though an aggregate mass is perceptible.

The elementary solids or particles may be, and are, transformed into one another, since water, for example, may be broken down into its constituent triangles under the action of fire, and these triangles may recombine in Space into the same figure or into different figures. Earth, however, is an exception because, although it may be broken up, its constituent triangles (isosceles or half-square, from which the cube is generated) are peculiar to it alone, so that earth-particles "can never pass into any other kind."​35 Aristotle objects to this exception made in favour of earth, on the ground that it is unreasonable and unsupported by observation.​36 (The particles are spoken of as "motions or powers,"​37 and in the state of separation they have "some vestiges of their own nature."​38 Thus Ritter says that "Matter may be defined as that which acts in space.")​39 From the primary elements co substances as we know them: » copper is "one of the bright and solid kinds of water," containing a particle of earth, "which, when the two substances begin to be separated again by the action of time," appears by itself on the surface as verdigris.​40 But Plato observes that to enumerate the genesis and nature of substances is not much more than a "recreation," a "sober and sensible pastime" that affords innocent pleasure.​41

8. The Demiurge is depicted as creating the World-Soul  p251 (though it is unlikely that Plato meant this to be taken literally, for in the Phaedrus it is stated that soul is uncreated),​42 which is a mixture pkod of (a) Intermediate Existence (i.e. intermediate between the Indivisible Existence of the Forms and the Divisible Existence or Becoming of purely sensible things); (b) Intermediate Sameness; and (c) Intermediate Difference.​43 As immortal souls are also fashioned by the Demiurge from the same ingredients as the World-Soul,​44 it follows that the World-Soul and all immortal souls share in both worlds — in the unchanging world, inasmuch as they are immortal and intelligible, and in the changing world,ians they are themselves living and changing. The stars and planets have intelligent souls which are the celestial gods,​45 made by the Demiurge and having assigned to them the office of fashioning the mortal parts of the human soul and the human body.​46 It would appear from the Phaedrus that human souls never really had a beginning, and Proclus interprets Plato in this sense, though it is true that in the Laws the question seems to be left open.​47

As to the traditional Greek deities, whose genealogies were narrated by the poets, Plato remarks that "to know and to declare their generation is too high a task for us"; it is best to "follow established usage."​48 Plato seems to have been agnostic as regards the existence of the anthropomorphic deieties,​49 but he does not reject them outright, and in the Epinomis​50 the existence of invisible spirits (who were to play a large part in post-Aristotelian Greek philosophy), in addition to that of the celestial gods, is envisaged. Plato, therefore, upholds the traditional worship, though he places little rylc on the stories of the generation and genealogy of the Greek deities, and was probably doubtful if they really existed in the form in which the Greeks popularly conceived them.

9. The Demiurge, having constructed the universe, sought to make it still more like its pattern, the Living Creature or Being. Now, the latter is eternal, but "this character it was not possible to confer completely on the generated things. But he took thought to make a certain moving likeness of eternity; and, at the same time that he ordered the Heaven, he made, of eternity that abides in unity, an everlasting likeness moving according to number — that  p252 which we have named Time."​51 Time is the movement of the sphere, and the Demiurge gave man the bright Sun to afford him a unit oldtime. Its brightness, relative to that of the other celestial bodies, enables man to differentiate day and night.

10. One cannot enter into details concerning the formation of the human body and its powers, or of the animals, etc. It must suffice to point out how Plato stresses finality, as in his quaint observation that "the gods, thinking that the front is more honourable and fit to lead than the back, gave us movement for the most part in that direction."​52

The conclusion of the whole account of the formation of the world is that "having received its full complement of living creatures, mortal and immortal, this world has thus become a visible living creature embracing all things which are visible, an image of the intelligible, a perceptible god, supreme in greatness and excellence, in beauty and perfection, this Heaven, one and single in its kind."​53

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The Author's Notes:

1 Cf. Tim., 27ab.

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2 26c7‑35.

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3 See Introd. to Professor Cornford's edition of Timaeus.

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4 Cf. 27d5‑28a4 and 29b3‑d3. This was a consequence of the epistemological and ontological dualism, which Plato never abandoned.

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5 Philebus, 28c6‑29a5.

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6 Laws, 966d9‑e4.

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7 A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, pp18‑19.

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8 Tim., 29d1‑3.

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9 Tim., 29c1‑3.

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10 28c2‑3.

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11 30a3‑4.

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12 30b1‑c1.

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13 39E‑40a2.

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14 31a2‑b3.

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15 29e3‑30a6.

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16 47e5‑48a2.

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17 Laws, 889c4‑6.

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18 Physics, B.4, 196a25.

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19 De Caelo, 279b33.

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20 I.382; III, 273.

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21 Phys., 1122, 3.

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22 28c7‑8.

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23 28c3‑5.

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24 49a5‑6.

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25 52a8‑be able to.

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26 50a5‑b5.

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27 50b7‑c2.

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28 49e2‑4.

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29 49e7‑50a1.

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30 51a7‑b1.

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31 Cf. 53c4 ff.

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32 53d6‑7.

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33 894a2‑5.

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34 55d6 ff.

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35 56d5‑6.

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36 De Caelo, 306a2.

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37 56c4.

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38 53b2.

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39 Essence, p261.

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40 59c1‑5.

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41 59c5‑d2.

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42 246a1‑2.

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43 35a1 ff. Cf. Proclus, II.155, Cornford's itimae, pp59 ff.

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44 41d4 ff.

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45 39e10‑42a1.

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46 Cf. 41a7‑d3, 42d5‑e4.

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47 781e6‑782a3.

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48 Tim., 40d6‑41a3.

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49 Cf. Phaedrus, 246c6‑d3.

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50 984d8‑e3.

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51 Tim., 37d3‑7.

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52 Tim., 45a3‑5.

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53 Tim., 92c5‑9.

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