Plato Allegory Of Cave

Two thousand years ago, human have been exploring the nature in order to find the universal law explaining nature phenomena. Explore nature require observation and mathematical interpretation. As I understand the achievements of scientists, my way of interpreting science has changed.

Plato (428-348 B.C.) used the ‘Allegory of Cave’ illustrated the theory of ‘Ideas and Forms’ in Republica : there are world of forms and sensible world. “The senses are chains that tie us down; the route to knowledge is through philosophical reflection” (Lindberg 14). Truth is changeless, eternal (Lindberg 13). Inside the cave is considered as sensible world; outside the cave is consider as world of forms. What we see is visible realm “visible realm it produces
This consider as the first milestone in human explorations of nature as this is how human started to think the truths behind nature. However, Aristotle expressed that the sensible world is the only world, form and matter made up the truth (Lindberg 19). The way to discover knowledge is to observe, memorize and intuition (Lindberg 20). He suggested the inductive and deductive way of reasoning, which are important concepts of modern science. “These dogs certainly shared a set of attributes- for otherwise we would not be entitled to call them ‘dogs’” (Lindberg 19) Dog is used as an example to illustrate the idea of observing commons of organisms. Aristotle was the first to research on motion, indicating motion requires a mover -prime mover allowed planets to orbit in a uniform circular motion. However, he did not use mathematics as proof of observation. Medieval scientists had quantified Aristotle’s idea, transforming baseless descriptions to mathematical ideas: dividing the four causes into dynamics and kinematics (Lindberg 35). “Mertonians to a new distinction: between the intensity of a quality and its quantity)” (Lindberg 38) which modern science adopts this as the fundamental idea. Afterwards, Philoponus pointed out medium as
However, the scientists mentioned have displayed a limited research into motion. Galileo failed as ‘he was too much a physicist” (Cohen 60)- couldn’t imagine a plane without limits. One of the greatest achievement of Newton is that he used mathematics to prove ideas which is objective. Newton has integrated knowledge by all the previous scientists, which forms classical mechanics. My understanding of science has changed after I studied the first part of the course. Science is separated into Physics, Chemistry and Biology. They are distinctively different- Physics is about law of motions, with a lot more mathematical concept within it. For me science is only experimentally proven theories instead of mathematically proven, but Newton has used mathematics as a tool to demonstrate the logical chain of reasoning behind the