Plato as a Natural Scientist
Plato as a Natural Scientist
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作为自然科学家的柏拉图
DOI：
10.2307/628673
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发表时间：
1968
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
G. Lloyd
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
G. Lloyd
关于柏拉图在希腊科学史上的地位，以及他著作中的许多其他特征，人们表达了广泛不同的意见。人们普遍认为柏拉图的态度和影响对科学来说是灾难性的。例如，普拉特说：“柏拉图首先是一个具有某种宗教体系的形而上学家，他不想让我们研究任何东西，除了形而上学和一种神秘的宗教。”丹皮尔-惠瑟姆认为“柏拉图是一位伟大的哲学家，但在实验科学史上，他必须被视为一场灾难”。在他的《古代地理史》中，汤姆逊谈到柏拉图“对自然科学赖以存在的观察的蔑视”，在他关于希腊科学的有影响力的著作《法林顿》中说，“从科学的观点来看，《蒂迈欧篇》是一个偏差”。另一方面，柏拉图发现，从那些主要是哲学家、科学哲学家、甚至是实践物理学家的人中，为他辩护的人几乎和从希腊专业学者中辩护的人一样多。在《科学与现代世界》（1926）和《思想历险记》（1933）等书中，怀特海承认，柏拉图应该对转移人们对物理科学中特定事实的观察的兴趣负责，但他暗示，“柏拉图还有另一个信息......他强烈地相信，数学关系的知识将证明，解开自然界中相关性之谜的钥匙，柏拉图的宇宙学推测的背后。因此，在某种意义上，“柏拉图和毕达哥拉斯比亚里士多德更接近现代物理科学”。1927年，肖里引用了怀特黑德的话，并在他的论文《柏拉图主义与科学史》中对这一解释进行了大量的发展，这篇论文可能仍然是对柏拉图作为科学家的声誉的最直言不讳的辩护。
Widely differing opinions have been expressed on Plato's place in the history of Greek science, as on many other features of his work. The view that Plato's attitude and influence were nothing short of disastrous for science has been widespread. Platt, for instance, put it that ‘Plato, being first and foremost a metaphysician with a sort of religious system, would not have us study anything but metaphysics and a kind of mystic religion’. Dampier-Whetham believed that ‘Plato was a great philosopher, but in the history of experimental science he must be counted a disaster’. In his History of Ancient Geography J. O. Thomson spoke of Plato's ‘positive contempt for observation, upon which natural science rests’, and in his influential book on Greek Science Farrington put it that ‘from the scientific point of view the Timaeus is an aberration’. On the other side Plato has found almost as many defenders from among those who were primarily philosophers, or philosophers of science, or even practising physicists, as from among the specialist Greek scholars themselves. In such books as Science and the Modern World (1926) and Adventures of Ideas (1933) Whitehead granted that Plato was responsible for diverting interest from the observation of particular facts in physical science, but suggested that ‘Plato had another message … An intense belief that a knowledge of mathematical relations would prove the key to unlock the mysteries of the relatedness within Nature was ever at the back of Plato's cosmological speculations’. There is a sense, then, in which ‘Plato and Pythagoras stand nearer to modern physical science than does Aristotle’. In 1927 Shorey quoted Whitehead and substantially developed this line of interpretation in his paper ‘Platonism and the History of Science’, still probably the most outspoken vindication of Plato's reputation as a scientist.