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Comment by yters | Hacker News Reader

Being a programmer, you've probably felt the appeal of Platonism, so I'd recommend a couple of his dialogues: Phaedrus, Symposium, and the Republic (in order of length, short to long, since they are pretty dense). I'd also recommend reading the Republic last, so you can get over the misconceptions you were probably taught in high school.

Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind is also very enlightening for a) understanding the goals of the enlightenment, and b) understanding the current state of our culture.

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Plato is crap: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=57000

I like this quote:

"To this day, most philosophers suffer from Plato's disease: the assumption that reality fundamentally consists of abstract essences best described by words or geometry. (In truth, reality is largely a probabilistic affair best described by statistics.)"

Before Plato and Heraclitus, Greeks thought reality was essentially chaotic and impossible to understand. You can see this in their creation myths. Heraclitus originated the idea of the Logos, a pattern underlying everything, and Plato built on this.

I think you mean before Thales.

Search for logos here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus

You stated that before Heraclitus 'Greeks thought reality was essentially chaotic and impossible to understand.' Thales is a counter-example who is earlier than Heraclitus. See the IEP http://www.iep.utm.edu/g/greekphi.htm or Edward Hussey's excellent book.

Assuming a material origin implies reality is orderly and understandable?

Speculating on a causal principle implies that there is causality in the universe. Consequently, order and the possiblity of some degree of understanding are also implied, although the translation from speculation to empirical confirmation is not.

I see. Well, sounds like you know more about the pre-Socratics than I. I was under the impression that it wasn't until Heraclitus that people thought things in our mind, like math, would correspond with external reality.

FYI, Pythagoras also pre-dates Heraclitus.

Huh, I'll have to find out what made Heraclitus' notion of Logos so distinct then.

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