Latest news with #Plato
National Geographic
12 hours ago
- National Geographic
Did these real-life events inspire the myth of Atlantis?
An illustration by Sir Gerald Hargreaves shows a utopian scene on a cove of the mythical land of Atlantis. Many scholars think Plato invented the story of Atlantis as a way to present his philosophical theories. Photograph by Mary Evans Picture Library/Everett Collection The lost city of Atlantis likely didn't exist, but Plato's fascinating island nation continues to spark questions. Here's what to know. Atlantis is an island nation mentioned in two of the Greek philosopher Plato's most famous dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. In them, he describes the ancient civilization as peaceful and vastly wealthy, protected by the sea god Poseidon. But although it's one of his most famous stories, it's almost certainly false. So why is this story still repeated more than 2,300 years after the ancient Greek's death? 'It's a story that captures the imagination,' says James Romm, a professor of classics at Bard College in Annandale, New York. 'It's a great myth. It has a lot of elements that people love to fantasize about.' Plato told the story of this ancient kingdom around 360 B.C. The founders, he said, were half god and half human. They created a utopian civilization and became a great naval power. Their home was made up of concentric islands in the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere near what would later be called the Strait of Gibraltar. The islands were separated by wide moats and linked by a canal that penetrated to the center. The lush islands contained gold, silver, and other precious metals and supported an abundance of rare, exotic wildlife. There was a great capital city on the central island, where a palace was built for Poseidon's mortal wife, Cleito. (These fabled 'ghost islands' exist only in atlases) Where is the lost city of Atlantis? There are many theories about where Atlantis was—in the Mediterranean sea, off the coast of Spain, even under what is now Antarctica. 'Pick a spot on the map, and someone has said that Atlantis was there,' says Charles Orser, curator of history at the New York State Museum in Albany. 'Every place you can imagine.' Plato said it existed about 9,000 years before his own time, and that its story had been passed down by poets, priests, and others. But Plato's writings about Atlantis are the only known records of its existence. (These 6 mystery islands existed only in the imaginations of ancient explorers—or did they?) Was Atlantis real? Few, if any, scientists think Atlantis existed. Ocean explorer Robert Ballard, the National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence who discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, notes that 'no Nobel laureates' have said that what Plato wrote about Atlantis is true. Still, Ballard says, the story of Atlantis is a 'logical' one since cataclysmic floods and volcanic explosions have happened throughout history, including one event that had some similarities to the story of the destruction of Atlantis. (Here's why the myth of Atlantis endures today) About 3,600 years ago, a massive volcanic eruption devastated the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea near Greece. At the time, a highly advanced society of Minoans lived on Santorini. The Minoan civilization disappeared suddenly at about the same time as the volcanic eruption. But Ballard doesn't think Santorini was Atlantis because the time of the eruption on that island doesn't coincide with when Plato said Atlantis was destroyed. Petra, Jordan A person standing in the doorway of the Monastery at Petra, Jordan, shows the enormity of the ancient building's entrance. Carved into the sandstone hill by the Nabataeans in the second century A.D., this towering structure, called El-Deir, may have been used as a church or monastery by later societies, but likely began as a temple. Photograph by Martin Gray (The mythological sirens weren't the seductresses we know today) Plato's Atlantis So if Atlantis didn't exist, then why did Plato tell this story? Romm believes Plato created it to convey some of his philosophical theories. 'He was dealing with a number of issues, themes that run throughout his work,' he says. 'His ideas about divine versus human nature, ideal societies, the gradual corruption of human society—these ideas are all found in many of his works. Atlantis was a different vehicle to get at some of his favorite themes.' (Read about the ancient empire that civilization forgot) The legend of Atlantis is a story about a moral, spiritual people who lived in a highly advanced, utopian civilization. But they became greedy, petty, and 'morally bankrupt.' The gods 'became angry because the people had lost their way and turned to immoral pursuits,' Orser says. As punishment, he says, the gods sent 'one terrible night of fire and earthquakes' that caused Atlantis to sink into the depths of the sea. This story originally published on January 21, 2017. It was updated on July 31, 2025.
Toronto Star
21 hours ago
- Lifestyle
- Toronto Star
A Good Life: Visitors to my local park want to pump up the volume; I'd prefer the sounds of silence. Am I entitled to complain?
What is A Good Life? Plato said it requires virtue. Epicurus said the trick is never talking politics. Nietzsche said if you're striving for happiness, you're losing. To the Star, A Good Life is our new advice column in which our philosophical advisors help you navigate everyday dilemmas about romance, career and how best to spend your fleeting time on earth, guiding you out of the existential muck, toward A Good Life. I'm lucky to live close to many beautiful urban parks. One of my favourites is a lakeside park that features an open field, some walking trails, playsets for kids, and a swimming dock. Unsurprisingly, it's very busy in the summertime with visitors of all ages. My question is about music. Some park users set up picnics and bring along portable speakers. I try not to be a grouch about this — it's a shared space after all and I don't expect perfect quiet. So: if I asked someone to turn down their music (or turn it off entirely), would I be unduly imposing my own auditory preferences on a public space, or defending the right of other park users to keep their ears free of others' (sometimes questionable) music choices?
Time of India
2 days ago
- Time of India
5 lost cities that are still rumoured to exist!
The idea of a lost city has floated as legends and into the minds of people hidden deep in jungles, beneath oceans, or placed in forgotten deserts. These mysterious places fire up our imagination, feeding tales of treasure and nighttime stories, or vanished civilizations. Some lost cities are based on legends and centuries-old beliefs, while others were misunderstood cultural references. Despite centuries of debate and research, certain names keep coming back. While technology like satellite mapping and deep-sea scanning has helped to find out many ancient sites, these five legendary cities continue to linger on despite being undiscovered. The lost city of Atlantis Atlantis is one of the most famous lost cities that was first mentioned by the Greek philosopher Plato around 360 BCE. He described it as an advanced island civilization that sank beneath the sea 'in a single day and night of misfortune.' No archaeological evidence has ever confirmed its existence, and most scholars agree it was meant as an allegory rather than a real place. Despite this, it continues to fascinate and inspire books, movies, and oceanic expeditions to this day. The city of Gold- El Dorado El Dorado was originally a legend about a golden-covered ruler, not a city. It comes from an old story about a Musica tribal chief in what is now Colombia. According to the legend, this chief would cover his body in gold dust during a religious ritual and then wash it off in a sacred lake, offering gold and other valuables to the gods. King of El Dorado being painted with Gold dust Credits: Wikimedia commons Spanish explorers in the 16th century twisted this into the idea of a golden city hidden in South America. Inspired by Indigenous rituals like those of the Muisca people, the myth led to numerous failed expeditions. While ancient settlements have been found in the Amazon, no city of gold has ever appeared, just jungle, ruins, and reminders of colonial greed. Shambhala or the hidden kingdom of peace According to popular belief, this hidden kingdom is situated amid the Himalayas, but according to a Tibetan Buddhist belief, it is described as a mystical realm of harmony, wisdom, and enlightenment. Unlike other lost cities, Shambhala is not considered a physical place but a spiritual one, accessible only through deep personal transformation. It was never meant to be found with a map, though seekers from the West, including the Nazis in the 1930s, tried it. It remains a more spiritual vision than the actual city. Zerzura Zerzura is said to be a lost oasis city in the Sahara, 'white as a dove' and guarded by mysterious beings. First mentioned in medieval Arabic texts, it led to expeditions in the 20th century by explorers like László Almásy. While some remote oases were found, Zerzura itself was not. Historians now believe it may have been a metaphor, or an exaggerated account of real desert settlements long lost to sand and time. Thule (Credits: Wikimedia commons) Thule Thule was first mentioned by the Greek explorer Pytheas in the 4th century BCE as the northernmost land, 'beyond the known world.' It was thought to be a mysterious, icy place inhabited by unusual people. Over time, Thule came to symbolize the limits of the map. While it may have referred indirectly to Iceland or Norway, it was never a defined city. Today, it lives on more in literature and lore than archaeology.
News18
5 days ago
- Science
- News18
The Mathematics Of The Gita
The Gita is an intriguing work; there is much more hidden in its short review of the entire gamut of Indian darshana than is visible on a surface view The Gita is a literary masterpiece. When I say literary, I am not including its remarkable exposition of the various Indian darshanas and their integration into a coherent vision, or its rhetoric, or the spiritual stepwise evolution experienced by the seeker who dives into it and adheres to it from beginning to end. I bring to your attention an aspect of the Gita that is often ignored. Its symphonic structure conceived in 700 shlokas is an expression of what Sri Aurobindo called complex harmonies. Its structure of independent shlokas that are strung together through the various means of rhythm, internal referencing, refrains, and a didactic and dialogic process that builds up chapter by chapter creates a kaleidoscopic experience that is fluid, alive, and constantly fresh. My soon-to-be-released book The Literary Genius of the Gita explores this aspect of the scripture. But there is another more esoteric and hidden aspect that might be worth exploring. That is its mathematical structure of matrix-like configurations that too has hitherto been ignored. The present essay is an attempt to explore this characteristic of its poetry. It may be worth mentioning here that the tradition of Sanskrit poetry, as shown by Pingala in Chhanda Shastra, is unique that its letters or varnas can be arranged in a binomial pattern. That is, the short syllables are assigned a value of 1 and the longer syllables a value of 2. When the varnas are represented by their mathematical value, we see interesting patterns emerge that were described by him in detail as an aspect of Sanskrit prosody. The only other language that assigns a mathematical structure to its phonemes that I know of is Hebrew especially in the Kabbalistic traditions. Modern mathematical structures such as Pascal's triangle and Fibonacci numbers were described by Pingala in his Meru Prastara couple of millennia ago. How far can we explore this today with artificial intelligence? Recently a write-up was published by Thomas Kissel in the journal Greek Reporter with the title 'Greek Philosopher Plato's Secret Code Discovered and Solved, Historian Claims'. It claims that there is a code of musical pattern buried in Plato's writings, most notably The Republic, discovered by a historian, Dr Jay Kennedy. The code seems to portray the entire Greek musical scale that contains twelve notes. We too have studied the patterns in the Gita from an Indic perspective with the help of our custom-designed AI software. These are the findings we came up with that may be of interest: We know that the Gita is divided into 18 chapters containing a total of 700 shlokas. Triadic structures are frequently seen such as three gunas (sattva, rajas and tamas). Sri Krishna classifies a tri-fold structure of many of his essential concepts, such as the triune path of Jnana-Karma and Bhakti, and the three types of knowledge, three kinds of action, three types of understanding and even three types of happiness in the 18th chapter, and these elements correspond to the three gunas that underline the play of Prakriti, or the principle of manifestation in Sankhya Yoga. Number 9 is often employed metaphorically. For example, the body is described as the 'city of nine gates' in chapter 5. Other symbolic use of numbers such as 1000 appear in chapter 11 to describe the dazzling manifestation of Sri Krishna's Vishvaroopa. There may be more as our AI system tells us: 'Some intriguing patterns emerge when looking at the proportions and sequence of verses in the Gita." 'Golden Ratio in Structure: It has been observed that the most climactic chapter – Chapter 11, where Arjuna witnesses Krishna's universal cosmic form (viśvarūpa) – occurs about 61 per cent of the way through the 18-chapter text. Chapter 11/18 is approximately 0.611 of the way in, which is remarkably close to the golden ratio (≈0.618). By verse count, too, the revelation of the cosmic form falls in the general vicinity of the 432nd verse out of 700 (around 61.7 per cent) — not exact, but notably close. This could be coincidental, but it does mirror a common storytelling technique of placing a dramatic 'golden climax" about two-thirds through a work. The fact that viśvarūpa darśana is the Gita's emotional and philosophical high point lends credence to the idea that the text intentionally peaks around the golden-section division. In other words, the narrative pacing aligns with an aesthetically pleasing ratio. (Whether Vyāsa consciously used the golden ratio is speculative; however, Indian tradition did employ harmonious proportions in art and architecture. The ancient Vedic science of design, Vāstu Śāstra, extensively uses the golden ratio in temple architecture, so the concept of an ideal division would not be foreign to the culture." There may be more such as instances of the use of Vedic and Pingala's numerology in the Gita, such as the use of Fibonacci numbers, Golden ratio in verse ratios, conscious numerology, etc. The Gita also uses musical and cosmic symbols. When we ran the AI application on the verses of the Gita, its conclusions seemed to support the hypothesis I have presented in my upcoming book, in pointing out the basic 'musical and mathematical resonance in language: it is worth noting that the Bhagavad Gita is mostly composed in anuṣṭubh meter, a quantitative verse form of 32 syllables (in two halves of 16 syllables each). This even, steady meter lends a rhythmic and almost mathematical cadence to the entire text. Each śloka can be seen as a couplet of two 16-syllable lines, giving the discourse a structured flow. This consistency is analogous to a piece of music maintaining a time signature – it imposes an underlying order on the content. The Gita occasionally uses other meters for special verses (some verses in Chapter 11 use triṣṭubh meter, 44 syllables, to convey the grandeur of the scene), but by and large the metrical discipline is maintained. The uniform meter might not be a 'code," but it is a designed pattern that aids memorization and recitation, reflecting the oral mathematicality of Sanskrit prosody" There is more. Mantric repetitions, alliteration, sound patterns, puns and double meanings, structured lists, recurring phrases or formulae, etc. It was impressive to have our AI application decode another aspect of The Literary Genius of the Gita. It concludes, 'In essence, the Gita's linguistic fabric is highly patterned, but these patterns serve didactic and emphasis purposes more than hiding secret messages. The 'code' of the Gita's language is in its mantra-like quality — through repetition, parallelism, and enumeration, it imprints ideas on the mind. For example, by the end, the reader has heard dharma dozens of times, yoga in many compounds, the refrain of 'surrender' in various forms — a bit like a musical theme recurring in different keys. This can be likened to a computational algorithm where key variables (dharma, atman, yoga, bhakti, etc) are revisited in multiple contexts, steadily building a complete picture. Notably, when comparing to the idea of a 'Plato code' (where a hidden musical-temporal structure was proposed in Plato's texts), the Gita's approach to encoding wisdom is more overtly structured rather than cryptographically hidden. It uses the natural Sanskrit propensity for symmetry and repetition as its 'code', making the text rhythmic, memorable, and conceptually clear." Indeed, the Gita is an intriguing work. There is much more hidden in its short review of the entire gamut of Indian darshana than is visible on a surface view. It is my hope that we uncover this multi-dimensionality and let it reveal the cryptic, the occult and esoteric aspects of its message. It is a 'highly ordered work', as our AI says, but there is a lot of method in its inspiration. Perhaps that is the great and open secret that invites us repeatedly to its mystery and genius. (This research was conducted using a novel, fine-tuned large language model [LLM] with expertise in Sanskrit literature, Hindu philosophy, and symbolic mathematics, combined with Python-based computational tools for structural and numerical analysis, including verse distribution mapping and golden ratio detection.) top videos View all (AI analytics was done by Ed Laughman, who attended medical school in Jena, Germany, before discovering a passion for healthcare technology. He has 15 years of experience in AI, machine learning, mathematics, and modern computation.) Pariksith Singh is author, poet, philosopher and medical practitioner based in Florida. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views. view comments Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: July 27, 2025, 12:05 IST News opinion Opinion | The Mathematics Of The Gita Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. 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Toronto Star
24-07-2025
- Lifestyle
- Toronto Star
A Good Life: My cousin's wife never eats the food I serve her. She always says she likes it, but her barely-touched plate says otherwise. What do I do?
What is A Good Life? Plato said it requires virtue. Epicurus said the trick is never talking politics. Nietzsche said if you're striving for happiness, you're losing. To the Star, A Good Life is our new advice column in which our philosophical advisors help you navigate everyday dilemmas about romance, career and how best to spend your fleeting time on earth, guiding you out of the existential muck, toward A Good Life. We often get together with our cousin; his wife is a very particular eater. I try bringing things that I think she'll like but nothing ever seems to be a hit. She always says no problem, she enjoyed it. Should I take her answer at face value? I really want her to enjoy the meal. Opinion articles are based on the author's interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details
