Ep. 264: Plato's "Timaeus" on Cosmology (Part One)

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Mark Linsenmayer

Casey, Paskin, Philosophy, Linsenmayer, Society & Culture, Alwan

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2021

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the later Platonic dialogue from around 360 BCE.

How is nature put together? Plato speaks through the fictional Timaeus (not Socrates) to give a "likely story" about the universe, physics, and biology involving a Craftsman (Demi-Urge) who created everything based on a pre-existing perfect model (the Forms!).

Timaeus derives his whole story from the principle that the world is good, and so the Craftsman must necessarily optimize creation, with any imperfections being introduced only by the necessity involved when a perfect blueprint gets embodied to create ever-shifting, impermanent matter.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	We're listening to the partially examined life, a podcast by some guys who at one point
0:11.8	said undoing philosophy for living but then thought better of it.
0:14.5	Our question for episode 264 is something like how is nature put together and we're reading
0:19.8	Plato's dialogue to Mayus, probably written around 360 BCE.
0:24.6	More information please visit partiallyexaminedlife.com.
0:27.8	This is Mark Linson-Mire unable to quite stabilize the wandering revolutions within me, even with
0:32.3	my regular harmony and rhythm in Madison, Wisconsin.
0:35.6	This is West all one, persuaded by necessity and Cambridge Massachusetts.
0:40.4	This is Dylan Casey desperately seeking the sixth platonic solid in Portland, Oregon.
0:47.8	Whoa.
0:48.8	Which turns out to be Susan.
0:50.8	That's the sense.
0:53.1	And 80's, 80's movie reference.
0:56.3	And Seth is caught with no power in a snowstorm.
0:59.1	So he did suffer through this dialogue.
1:01.1	Well, that's the way he described it, but yet does not get the payoff.
1:05.1	Only to be ungratified by no recording.
1:07.9	Well, I knew what this was coming into it.
1:11.0	I wouldn't have liked this had I read it a dozen years ago, but I kind of enjoyed it.
1:16.2	You know, after doing parmenides and vet parmenides and things, what did you folks think?
1:21.6	So it was probably the third time I read most of it.
1:24.7	The other two times I read, I guess, selections, big selections of it.
	...

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