The atomists agreed that motion required a void, but simply ignored the argument of the Eleatic school on the grounds that motion was an observable fact. Therefore, they asserted, there must be a void. This idea survived in a refined version as Newton’s theory of absolute space, which met the logical requirements of attributing reality to not being. Einstein’s theory of relativity provided a new answer to Parmenides and Zeno, with the insight that space by itself is relative and cannot be separated from time as part of a generally curved space–time manifold. Consequently, Newton’s refinement is now considered superfluous.
Figure 3: Democritus’ view with individual atoms.
Also, there was the Athenian school started by Socrates (470 BC–399 BC) and succeeded by Plato (430 BC to 348–347 BC) and Aristotle (384 BC–322 BC). Socrates’ philosophy is largely known by Plato’s dialogues. Plato established a school of thought where he taught students and held seminars. He also founded the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars believe that he was born in Athens or Aegina between 429 BC and 423 BC, not long after the start of the Peloponnesian War. According to Neanthes of Cyzicus, Plato was 6 years younger than politician Isocrates who was born in 436 BC. He is widely considered the pivotal figure in the history of Ancient Greek and Western philosophy, along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle. Plato has also often been cited as one of the founders of Western religion and spirituality. The so-called Neoplatonism of philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyry influenced Saint Augustine and thus Christianity. Alfred North Whitehead once noted, “the safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” Plato disliked Democritus, the founder of a competing philosophy, so much that he wished all of the latter’s books burned. Democritus was nevertheless well known to his fellow Northern-born philosopher Aristotle.
As a follower of Pythagorean teaching, Plato liked mathematical reasoning about Nature. So, he associated each of the four classical elements (fire, air, earth, and water) with a regular solid (tetrahedron, octahedron, cube, and icosahedron) due to their shapes, the so-called Platonic solids, and movements to golden ratios of numbers. He associated the fifth regular solid, the dodecahedron, to introducing time. Farmers in early civilisations needed to know the perfect time to plant their crops. Humans began to observe the Sun’s passage through a fixed point and this practice distinguished seasons. The Sun’s movement is time and hence the heavenly objects are related to time. These regular solids have fundamental faces, regular triangle, square, and regular pentagon. Even Werner Heisenberg mentioned3 the beauty (or symmetry) of Plato’s geometrical objects: “In Plato’s Timaeus, finally fundamental particles are not shapeless but mathematical objects.”
In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates and his company of disputants had something to say on many subjects, including several aspects of metaphysics. These include religion and science, human nature, love, and sexuality. More than one dialogue contrasts perception and reality, nature and custom, and body and soul. In the Timaeus (participants of the dialogue are Timaeus, Socrates, Hermocrates, and Critias), we find that Plato’s “the good (agathon in Greek)” becomes the principle in the creation of the universe. ‘Kosmos’ in Greek means “good, beautiful order”. Plato named the creator as dẽmiourgos, meaning craftsman-like carpenter. A carpenter exercises his best in making a table, and so does dẽmiourgos, realising agathon in the process of creating the universe. Dẽmiourgos in the dialogue Timaeus is the deified expression of Plato’s good and intelligence. Thus, Plato’s creation is both metaphysical and technical. The Timaeus was translated into Latin first by Marcus Tullius Cicero around 45 BC and later by Calcidius in the 4th century AD. Cicero’s fragmentary translation was highly influential in late antiquity, especially on Latin-speaking Church fathers such as Saint Augustine who did not appear to have access to the original Greek dialogue. Here, we follow a Korean translation from the Greek original by Korean experts on Plato’s dialogues.4
Timaeus narrates that Dẽmiourgos creates the universe based on his principle of the good and intelligence. Initially, the four elements (fire, air, earth, and water) were shapeless traces of them, mixed and in constant motion in the space (chòra). To relate to reality by observation, Plato reasoned that you cannot see anything without fire. Fire is the first element. Without earth, you cannot make solids. To have the continents, therefore, earth is the second element. To connect fire and earth, you need some flexible elements, which are air and water. Air and water are around the continent, and Fig. 4 places air and water around earth. In Fig. 4, the living creatures carrying the essence of these elements are inserted in the four regular solids. Then, Dẽmiourgos considered movements based on the patterns and the movement needed measuring time. For time, Plato related to the heavenly objects, Sun, Moon, planets, and stars. Out of these shapeless elements, Dẽmiourgos brought order and clarity, imitating (like a craftsman who follows a design) an unchanging and eternal model (idea or paradeigma). Timaeus travelled to Egypt and might have known Moses’ story, but his “shapeless” and the one in the first sentence of Genesis, “When in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the earth being untamed and shapeless, God said, Let there be light!” are different according to Chong-Hyun Park. The meaning in the Genesis is creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo in Latin introduced by Christian philosophers and clergy) and Greeks’ creation was “nothing is made out of nothing”(ex nihilo nihilo fit in Latin), namely, Dẽmiourgos’ creation was making shapes with the substance, technically using eidè (polygons) and arithmoi (numbers). As a carpenter, Dẽmiourgos had a purpose and designed his imitation based on the most ideal. The heavenly objects are placed in the dodecahedron5 with the Sun, the next important one beyond Earth, circling around it and others following the Sun or staying at one point, as shown in Fig. 5. The final shapes must be as beautiful (i.e., symmetric) as possible, ending up with five regular solids of Fig. 4.
Figure 4: Plato’s five regular solids and the corresponding elements.
Figure 5: Plato’s view of the universe in the dodecahedron.
•God’s design: Plato’s creation was a carpenter’s work following a principle (idea or paradeigma in Greek). Moses’ creation was out of nothing. In modern particle theory, the beauty and/or simplicity is frequently mentioned, which may be placed in Plato’s principle. So, we put Shakespeare’s ingenious design of the play in God’s design.
•Darwinism: The universe evolves according to the natural laws but the ingredients (particles) are put in the hot soup with certain initial conditions. Here, one does not need God’s hand of Fig. 1 in prologue. Even the initial conditions are better to be given by the natural laws. In this sense, basically Einstein’s God means creation via Darwinism.
Plato’s student Aristotle is considered to be the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy, opened in Lyceum in 335 BC, and Aristotelian tradition. Along with his teacher Plato, he has been called the ‘Father of Western Philosophy’. According to Chong-Hyun Park, Aristotle was trying to escape from the aura of Plato. Aristotle’s views on physical science written in Peri Physeos (On Nature) profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. Their influence extended from Late