Philosophy

Nearly Lost Interview with Rebecca Goldstein

/ diotimasladder / 12 Comments

I thank you for the lovely and thoughtful review of Plato at the Googleplex. I'm under a lot of time pressure right now, but I couldn't avoid answering your thoughtful questions. Please forgive the inadequacy of the too-brief answers. —Sincerely, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein 

Plato’s Divided Line

/ diotimasladder / 4 Comments

Fantastic work on the mathematical features of Plato’s Divided line over at Logos Con Carne——using ancient methods!

Logos con carne

Recently my friend Tina, who writes the blog Diotima’s Ladder, asked me if I could help her with a diagram for her novel. (Apparently all the math posts I’ve written gave her ideas about my math and geometry skills!)

What she was looking for involved Plato’s Divided Line, an analogy from his runaway bestseller, the Republic (see her post Plato’s Divided Line and Cave Allegory for an explanation; I’m not going to go into it much here). The goal is a geometric diagram proving that the middle two segments (of four) must be equal in length.

This post explores and explains what I came up with.

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