We sweep the ancients aside at our peril. I've been reading the works of Plato during part of my commute for the past few months. And for the past six months o

We sweep the ancients aside at our peril. I've been reading the works of Plato during part of my commute for the past few months. And for the past six months or so I've been one of several peer reviewers for a certain philosophy-of-science paper which we only recently finally all agreed to accept (after many rounds of revisions). Oh, if only we had waited--just this week, I was reading one of Plato's dialogues and, bang! The big problem which our reviewee was working on was addressed right there on the pages, from the lips of Socrates, over 2000 years ago.