A friend asked what I was hoping to finding looking for a philosophical topic today to read. What I hoped to find and what I did find were quite different. This morning I saw an article that the New Horizons probe that is presently somewhere beyond Neptune used its cameras to make a parallax with three distant stars- up to 57 light years or so, in order to find its relative location in space. That isn't really too easy if you think about it. Actually that was the first time any Earth probe has done that.
Once away from the Earth and solar system it would become fairly easy to become lost and unsure midst the stars where one is. The sun is a common main sequence star and there are millions in the Milky Way Galaxy. It is comparable to becoming lost and unable to find one’s tent pitched in the great northern mainland forest among trees that go on for miles in any direction, except the forest exists in three dimensions and has relative time differences and gravitational affects that concentrate here and there warping space.
Perhaps I would have enjoyed some interesting comment about phenomenalism and how it relates to one and zero dimensional particles that haven't time because they are massless and comments on why mass entanglement arises from nothingness. What is masslessness anyway except as it exists in relation to mass?
Someone asked what Plato meant with his quote in The Laws so I explained it for them. I reposted it here just above. I tend to write well with interesting prompts or topics to consider. Just clarifying or rectifying concepts people may lack or misunderstanding sometimes is interesting.
Plato expressed the opinion in “The Laws”- book 5″ (described as his most loathed work) that; “”when men have nothing and are in want of food, show a disposition to follow their leaders in an attack on the property of the rich.”
Gemini said that it was Plato’s concern about the dangers of social inequality- a positive spin. I have a different idea about its meaning and origin.
Bertrand Russell said Plato was a fascist. I believe the Republic does have some misleading ideas about government and some great ideas about a realm of forms. It is the quality of the work in that era that is remarkable. It has been a positive social influence edifying potential scholars for nearly 2500 years,
Socrates and Plato were in support of the restoration of oligarchy in Athens. That is they were in opposition to the demos/ democracy that presumably taxed the rich. The conversations of Socrates and his dialogues may have been motivated to illuminate the stupidity of leadership in the democracy and to restore the oligarchic rule of rich Athenians.
Such agitation was why Socrates was accused of corrupting youth and ultimately executed with hemlock. The Republic idolized the Spartan government in effect, perhaps because it was ruled non-democratically and instead with a pair of philosopher-king dictators for life.
Socrates may have imagined himself and Plato as dictators for life in a new Athenian government, yet in my opinion that idea never went far or escaped Plato or Socrates’ lips. Their sentiments were for a return of the oligarchy, and it sometimes can help to have help from the rich and powerful in life. N.P.R. for example without U.S. Government funding is mostly funded by rich corporate donors finding them a useful tool for corrupting the demos.powerful in life. N.P.R. for example without U.S. Government funding is mostly funded by rich corporate donors finding them a useful tool for corrupting the demos.
No comments:
Post a Comment