Sing Me a Song Mr. Plato!

[Margot]

Michael, this made me think of you:

It sounds like something out of a Dan Brown novel, but a scholar in Manchester, England, claims to have found hidden code in the ancient writings of Plato. If true, the secret messages would have made the ancient philosopher and mathematician a heretic in his day.

Jay Kennedy tells NPR's Guy Raz that his discovery was partially luck. Looking at Plato's works in their original scroll form, he noticed that every 12 lines there was a passage that discussed music. "The regularity of that pattern was supposed to be noticed by Plato's readers," Kennedy says.

Apparently, our ancient hero Plato was truly a Renaissance man! (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128288987)

I'm not buying that the evidence presented warrants the closing argument of the article (or did the Pythagoreans literally "worship" math?), but I definitely would LOVE it if sometime in my life I could go to the opening of Plato's First Symphony.

But I guess I wanted to ask if this is really news, or if people have been humming Platonic choruses for years now? It seems to me that someone would have picked up on such a glaringly simplistic pattern ages ago. (OTHER DISCUSSION IS ALSO, LIKE, TOTALLY ACCEPTABLE. Just in case you were wondering...)

[Greendruid]

Michael, this made me think of you:



Apparently, our ancient hero Plato was truly a Renaissance man! (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128288987)

I'm not buying that the evidence presented warrants the closing argument of the article (or did the Pythagoreans literally "worship" math?), but I definitely would LOVE it if sometime in my life I could go to the opening of Plato's First Symphony.

But I guess I wanted to ask if this is really news, or if people have been humming Platonic choruses for years now? It seems to me that someone would have picked up on such a glaringly simplistic pattern ages ago. (OTHER DISCUSSION IS ALSO, LIKE, TOTALLY ACCEPTABLE. Just in case you were wondering...)

Neat finding. And no, I don't think that someone would have necessarily seen this before. How often do you read your Shelley or Wordsworth on their original parchments? Plato is not only translated into possibly every major language but the original Greek versions are not written in the narrow scroll format that he would have used. So if the original Koine is used, the lines wouldn't match up in the same manner as they would have been written on the scrolls. Thus, the 12th spacing would be thrown off.

What I don't buy about this guy's argument is that Plato was telling people to combine science and religion. There are enough Christian apologists for Platonic philosophy to stock a Wal-mart with.

[Margot]

Neat finding. And no, I don't think that someone would have necessarily seen this before. How often do you read your Shelley or Wordsworth on their original parchments? Plato is not only translated into possibly every major language but the original Greek versions are not written in the narrow scroll format that he would have used. So if the original Koine is used, the lines wouldn't match up in the same manner as they would have been written on the scrolls. Thus, the 12th spacing would be thrown off.

What I don't buy about this guy's argument is that Plato was telling people to combine science and religion. There are enough Christian apologists for Platonic philosophy to stock a Wal-mart with.

I dunno, my copy of Shelley has photocopies of his original scribbles...

It doesn't matter how many people have seen this original text. People are obviously actively studying these scrolls (or else this discovery wouldn't have been published at all), in which case, why did this take so long to discover? Why wouldn't the pattern be discovered during the translation process into every major language? It seems more bizarre to me that the pattern wasn't found until now, than it would have been for it to have been discovered before.

[Michael]

First of all, I don't know if this story is 'real' or not. It will need to be peer-reviewed to become established.

That being said, given that Plato was well known to be obsessed about music and the musical scale (he postulated that the universe was created in harmony with the musical scale, with planets at intervals determed by the ratio of the musical scale), I can't imagine ANYONE would be even remotely surprised by this (if it is true). This concept is known as the "harmony of the spheres" in Greek philosophy.

And there is NOTHING heretical about such an obsession for the musical scale amongst the ancient Greek philosophers or ancient Greek society. Indeed, that's probably the ONLY part of Plato's work that wouldn't have been 'controversial' to contemporary Greek society.

As for the surprise discovery, as Greendruid noted, the original copies are far too rare and valuable for most scholars to read directly from them.

That Plato himself was a philosopher and a mathematician has long been known to history. The combination is quite common amongst the ancient Greeks (ie. Pythagoras).

[Greendruid]

I dunno, my copy of Shelley has photocopies of his original scribbles...

It doesn't matter how many people have seen this original text. People are obviously actively studying these scrolls (or else this discovery wouldn't have been published at all), in which case, why did this take so long to discover? Why wouldn't the pattern be discovered during the translation process into every major language? It seems more bizarre to me that the pattern wasn't found until now, than it would have been for it to have been discovered before.

... and do you read Shelley's original scribbles verbatim noting the positions of the letters and lines? OR do you note that they're there and then refer to the plain-text, easy to read, typewritten font? Furthermore are you more concerned with the content of the poetry rather than the appearance of some obscure patterns? It's just not common practice to do this in-depth kind of analysis. What we would call ethnohistory in my line of work.

[Margot]

... and do you read Shelley's original scribbles verbatim noting the positions of the letters and lines? OR do you note that they're there and then refer to the plain-text, easy to read, typewritten font? Furthermore are you more concerned with the content of the poetry rather than the appearance of some obscure patterns? It's just not common practice to do this in-depth kind of analysis. What we would call ethnohistory in my line of work.

Those "plain-text, easy to red, typewritten font" pages had to have been transcribed by someone--hopefully that person was paying A LOT of attention. Now, if Shelley were a known pianist, and he made mention every eighth (or even eighty-eighth) line, you think someone would have noticed. Same with Plato, particularly if he was known to be "obsessed" with music, as Michael says.

But I guess it doesn't matter. My surprise that this wasn't previously discovered is pointless. Apparently it wasn't, and apparently you're right. Still, it's strange. Oh well!

[Michael]

Those "plain-text, easy to red, typewritten font" pages had to have been transcribed by someone--hopefully that person was paying A LOT of attention. Now, if Shelley were a known pianist, and he made mention every eighth (or even eighty-eighth) line, you think someone would have noticed. Same with Plato, particularly if he was known to be "obsessed" with music, as Michael says.

But I guess it doesn't matter. My surprise that this wasn't previously discovered is pointless. Apparently it wasn't, and apparently you're right. Still, it's strange. Oh well!
It is a very interesting piece of news and I certainly thank you for sharing it! I will follow it up as I am always interested in the writings of the Great Master himself! ;)

Actually, this [potential] discovery is one of those things that I'm afraid our modern academic fetish for ultra-specialization is likely to produce less and less of. This is particularly notable in the field of 'natural philosophy' where all the great masters were 'generalists' (interested in many different fields).

Btw, I had the pleasure of studying Plato in both the Political Science and the Philosophy departments (of entirely different faculties) - that was a real eye-opener!