QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

the deeper world of ideas, even though it was not necessary for all ideas or forms 94 to be
mathematical. Plato contrasts the imperfect shapes of the corporal world of the senses with the
perfect forms of mathematics. Material things are copies, shadow images of the ideal shapes in
eternal reality. 95
Plato’s dualistic teachings concerning the two worlds was in agreement with the old
Pythagorean-Orphistic view of the soul and the body. The body was the way in which humans
participated in the incessant changes and happenings of the world, while the soul belonged in
essence to the eternal world of ideas. Even though the universal principles were manifested as
specific objects on the sense-world, experiences resulting from the sense-world did not, in
Plato’s opinion, offer real knowledge, only opinions with a propensity to mislead. If a human
wished to obtain infallible and correct knowledge, he had to use his reason and intuition to
address the eternal world of Ideas. Knowledge (Greek: episteme) always concerned the
immutable and the transcendental, while the temporal and perceived world could be no more
than the subject of supposition or assumption (Greek: doxa). The logical inevitability of ideas
could be revealed either by transcendental meditation or by analysing empirical experience using
strict dialectic and mathematical methods. The human being’s eternal soul could also recall
knowledge which it had possessed at an earlier time. Astronomical contemplation and
interpretation of the movements of heavenly bodies offered a direct route to understanding the
deepest conceptions of reality, while the geometry of the heavens and the gods were, in Plato’s
way of thinking, indissolubly intertwined. The movements of the gods were revealed in the
moving geometry in the sky. 96
For Plato, Ideas were not neutral objects to be addressed in a cold and analytical manner, they
were rather deep transcendental entities which awakened intense feelings and even mystic
exaltation in philosophers and lovers of wisdom. There was some kind of internal connection
between the absolute universals, forms and ideas which ruled and explained the chaos of life and
the mythical beings: On one hand, Plato spoke of Ideas as abstract archetypes, on the other as
godlike and mythical figures. For both Plato and Pythagoras, discovery of the mathematical
forms that controlled reality revealed a godlike intelligence in transcendental perfection. After
Plato, ancient thinking and neo-Platonism reiterated the view of an intelligence controlling and
94 Plato used the Greek words “idea” and “eidos” (form) interchangeably. Tarnas 1998, 6.
95 This idea is elaborated in the discussion concerning wavefunctions in Section 5.2.1. In Heisenberg’s words, we
are nowadays tempted to continue Plato’s thinking: these ideal shapes are actual because and insofar as they become
”act”-ive in material events. Heisenberg 1985, 58.
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