Viewing the World from Different Angles: Plato’s Timaeus 54E-55A
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Ernesto Paparazzo
Abstract
The present article investigates a passage of the Timaeus in which Plato describes the construction of the pyramid. Scholars traditionally interpreted it as involving that the solid angle at the vertex of the pyramid is equal, or nearly so, to 180°, a value which they took to be that of the most obtuse of plane angles. I argue that this interpretation is not warranted, because it conflicts with both the geometrical principles which Plato in all probability knew and the context of the Timaeus. As well as recalling the definitions and properties of plane angles and solid angles in Euclid’s Elements, I offer an alternative interpretation, which in my opinion improves the comprehension of the passage, and makes it consistent with both the immediate and wider context of the Timaeus. I suggest that the passage marks a transition from plane geometry to solid geometry within Plato’s account of the universe.
© 2013 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- The Nous Doctrine in Plato’s Thought
- Counting the Hypotheses in Plato’s Parmenides
- Viewing the World from Different Angles: Plato’s Timaeus 54E-55A
- Reason to Care: The Object and Structure of Self-Knowledge in the Alcibiades I
- Causality, Agency, and the Limits of Medicine
- Skepticism, Belief, and the Criterion of Truth
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- The Nous Doctrine in Plato’s Thought
- Counting the Hypotheses in Plato’s Parmenides
- Viewing the World from Different Angles: Plato’s Timaeus 54E-55A
- Reason to Care: The Object and Structure of Self-Knowledge in the Alcibiades I
- Causality, Agency, and the Limits of Medicine
- Skepticism, Belief, and the Criterion of Truth
