4 ms·

New Research on Plato and Pythagoras

32 points by pygy_ 16y ago

BoppreH 16y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1469965 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1469965 Yours has a more direct link to the full article, though.
- pygy_ 16y ago
  Sorry, I missed it. Most people here should actually skip the general public explaination and read the part written for scholars, which is more straightforward. I haven't read the essay in PDF format, but I expect it to be quite an insightful read. Edit: the server ate my upvote. :-/
  - Adaptive 16y ago
    This is pretty stunning actually. Wondering, if this is borne out, how it gets handled in the Loebs. Just wow. Great post. How did you come across it?
    - pygy_ 16y ago
      Slashdot </shame> ;-)
rgejman 16y ago
This reads like an Indiana Jones script. I can just picture a professor frantically waving his hands in the air and yelling, "if Plato's music fall into the hands of the Nazis, it could spell the end for Western Civilization as we know it!!"
- pygy_ 16y ago
  You basically described the plot of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, the adventure game released in the early 90's.
tmsh 16y ago
Ironically, one example of the dangers of bright people staying in the academy for too long (on twelve different levels). Which is not to knock academia. Or Plato. Or this paper, exactly. But I feel kind of sorry for this guy. Throughout my undergraduate years, I was very into this kind of thing. Because of the Indiana Jones aspect, as someone mentioned. Unfortunately, it's so easy to misinterpret patterns. There are many more dialogues -- which I assume don't fit the model of 35 characters a page or whatever he's going for. And there are many dialogues where these supposed synchronous 'concepts' aren't apparent. Some day if scholarship got a lot more scientific, there'd be control groups and actual statistical verification. In the meantime, cognitive dissonance is hard once you go down the numeracy rabbit hole. Aristotle thought Plato was somewhat Pythagorean because...Plato went and stayed with a bunch of Pythagoreans in Syracuse for a while. If anything, 'stichometry' is much more something a monk would do (in the manner of the Divine Comedy, etc., at the least it seems more Hellenistic and less Classical). And maybe we do get some of the dialogues abridged and ordered to meet the pages that they copied. Also, 'one or two percent accuracy' (top of page 10) when you're counting lines doesn't sound that convincing. But maybe I'm wrong. It'd be much more convincing if the text could be presented visually and the structure clearly was broken up that way.... And you could show, for instance, that when you break things up with 34 characters or 33 characters, you get no interesting patterns. But when you align things perfectly, a preponderance of patterns suddenly emerges. I don't get the sense that there is a 'preponderence' or whatever. But maybe.
- pygy_ 16y ago
  The "visual introduction"[1] presents some IMO compelling evidence. I'm well aware of our strong confirmation bias and the tendency of our brains to detect patterns where none are to be found, but some other examples are striking, like the definition of the golden ratio place at 61.7% of a dialog, for example, and other patterns in the structure of he dialogs at 1/4 of the notes interval (with some nice meta patterns where discussion about music/ harmonics occurs on key intervals). The author also states that stichometry is mentioned either in a dialogue or in a text written by a disciple of Plato ( I don't remember, and I'm typing this on my phone which makes cross checking a bit of a chore). Suspicion is legitimate, since this field is dominated by cranks. The auhtor is well aware of this fact, btw, which in my eyes makes him brave because of he discredit this kind of research can lead to in accademic circles. [1] http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/jay.kennedy/Kennedy_Visual_Intro.pdf http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/jay.kennedy/Kenn...

32 points by pygy_ 16y ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1469965 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1469965 Yours has a more direct link to the full article, though.

pygy_ 16y ago
Sorry, I missed it. Most people here should actually skip the general public explaination and read the part written for scholars, which is more straightforward. I haven't read the essay in PDF format, but I expect it to be quite an insightful read. Edit: the server ate my upvote. :-/
- Adaptive 16y ago
  This is pretty stunning actually. Wondering, if this is borne out, how it gets handled in the Loebs. Just wow. Great post. How did you come across it?
  - pygy_ 16y ago
    Slashdot </shame> ;-)

rgejman 16y ago

This reads like an Indiana Jones script. I can just picture a professor frantically waving his hands in the air and yelling, "if Plato's music fall into the hands of the Nazis, it could spell the end for Western Civilization as we know it!!"

pygy_ 16y ago
You basically described the plot of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, the adventure game released in the early 90's.

tmsh 16y ago

Ironically, one example of the dangers of bright people staying in the academy for too long (on twelve different levels). Which is not to knock academia. Or Plato. Or this paper, exactly. But I feel kind of sorry for this guy. Throughout my undergraduate years, I was very into this kind of thing. Because of the Indiana Jones aspect, as someone mentioned. Unfortunately, it's so easy to misinterpret patterns. There are many more dialogues -- which I assume don't fit the model of 35 characters a page or whatever he's going for. And there are many dialogues where these supposed synchronous 'concepts' aren't apparent. Some day if scholarship got a lot more scientific, there'd be control groups and actual statistical verification. In the meantime, cognitive dissonance is hard once you go down the numeracy rabbit hole. Aristotle thought Plato was somewhat Pythagorean because...Plato went and stayed with a bunch of Pythagoreans in Syracuse for a while. If anything, 'stichometry' is much more something a monk would do (in the manner of the Divine Comedy, etc., at the least it seems more Hellenistic and less Classical). And maybe we do get some of the dialogues abridged and ordered to meet the pages that they copied. Also, 'one or two percent accuracy' (top of page 10) when you're counting lines doesn't sound that convincing. But maybe I'm wrong. It'd be much more convincing if the text could be presented visually and the structure clearly was broken up that way.... And you could show, for instance, that when you break things up with 34 characters or 33 characters, you get no interesting patterns. But when you align things perfectly, a preponderance of patterns suddenly emerges. I don't get the sense that there is a 'preponderence' or whatever. But maybe.

pygy_ 16y ago
The "visual introduction"[1] presents some IMO compelling evidence. I'm well aware of our strong confirmation bias and the tendency of our brains to detect patterns where none are to be found, but some other examples are striking, like the definition of the golden ratio place at 61.7% of a dialog, for example, and other patterns in the structure of he dialogs at 1/4 of the notes interval (with some nice meta patterns where discussion about music/ harmonics occurs on key intervals). The author also states that stichometry is mentioned either in a dialogue or in a text written by a disciple of Plato ( I don't remember, and I'm typing this on my phone which makes cross checking a bit of a chore). Suspicion is legitimate, since this field is dominated by cranks. The auhtor is well aware of this fact, btw, which in my eyes makes him brave because of he discredit this kind of research can lead to in accademic circles. [1] http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/jay.kennedy/Kennedy_Visual_Intro.pdf http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/jay.kennedy/Kenn...