Triangles of the Gods

Late last night Sophie and I were laying around talking, and she asked me to explicate a point I had tried to make about dreams being much more related to art than to science, as she knows I expressed uncertainty about being back in school and being able to make clear arguments vocally in class. This lead into a much larger discussion about the roots of psychology and science in the ancient philosophers, and I was surprised to discover how much I was able to tie in points I had learned in class, as if I am actually already learning this stuff. It made me realize how much I miss good intellectual conversations, which seem so few and far between in my life right now but have never really drawn on source material the way I will be expected to do for school.

For my history of philosophy class, Magic Medicine and Science, I was asked to read Plato's "Timaeus," the ideas of which are perhaps pivotal to the modern view of science and medicine, but what immediately struck me was how much it sounded like a load of hogwash. Full of Demiurges and half-formulated mathematical theorems, an attempt to explain the creation of the world in terms of the four elements which would be laughed down if published in the modern world, and yet still held such an impact on all trains of rational thinking that followed. I felt that with his preponderance on just how the Demiurge created the world, the soul, and all the creatures, the "Timaeus" read almost more like a creation myth I would discuss in my Myth Symbol and Ritual class, although with the supernatural beings replaced by the peculiar triangles of the Platonic solids. And yet I could still see how it was the root of logic, that it attempted to offer an explanation of the processes of the natural world without recourse to a pantheon of gods. It is kind of difficult to wrap my brain around the fact that Plato existed simultaneously with the myths of Zeus and his pantheon, despite the hoakiness of his theories it seems like two entirely different views of reality.

Of course, amidst all the elements cutting each other to create color and getting mixed about in the 'Receptacle' of reality, there is still some very practical wisdom that seems almost forgotten in this modern age. Particularly, Plato suggests that psychological disorders are a result of an imbalance of attention and of bad education, and recommends that if one is sick due to intellectual overbalance to go do some gymnastics, but to resort to medicine as the last course, as it will fuck you up more than it helps you. As much as science, psychology, medicine drew on these ancient philosophies it seems to have overlooked such obvious sense and instead we have the pharmaceutical industry.