Grant Dowling | Mathematical Astronomy in Plato’s Laws

In Plato’s Laws, understanding the interrelations of the movements of the heavenly bodies generates the support for believing both that the cosmos is something created and that every individual human being stands in an unshirkable relationship to its maker who is the origin of its orderly cycles. These beliefs consequently secure the normative force of legal commands, rebukes, and exhortations. This paper focuses on how learning mathematics transforms students’ a) appreciation of the divinity of rationality and b) their self-conception as part of a of a rationally ordered system.

This is a hybrid event. Please contact me Malloy Owen, owenmt@stanford.edu for the paper and the Zoom link.