Meditation 11
From Plato's Republic[1]
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| As being is to becoming, so is pure intellect to opinion, And as intellect is to opinion, so is science to belief, and understanding to the perception of shadows.[2] |  |
Footnotes:
- A brief meditation on which you are invited to place your own interpretation.
- I cannot remember the personal interpretation that I placed on this that caused me to think it appropriate here. At times I have considered removing it, but that would leave a hole. Thanks to a recent article in Scientific American (August 2003 - Information in the Holographic Universe), I find new relevance in this quotation. From the article overview:
- An astonishing theory called the holographic principle holds that the universe is like a hologram; just as a trick of the light allows a fully three-dimensional image to be recorded on a flat piece of film, our seemingly three dimensional universe could be completely equivalent to alternative quantum fields and physical laws "painted" on a distant vast surface.
- Physicists hope that this surprising finding is a clue to the ultimate nature of reality
While a shadow is not a hologram, there seems to be enough of a parallel to make Plato seem remarkably prescient.