From Alan Wardman's book "Plutarch's Lives".
These quotes in this and a few subsequent blogs throw some interesting lights on beliefs held in ancient times that are at leat worth hearing.
Scientific Explanations
“Plato’s influence was all-important in gradually persuading ordinary people that the scientific explanation of celestial phenomena is not unreconcilable with a religious attitude towards god... [Plutarch] is writing loosely, fired by the idea that philosophy had come to seem irreligious...[then an insight into how Plato saw the natural world] but Plato complained that they [Eudoxus and Archytas] were corrupting geometry by solving problems in the medium of perceptible objects instead of referring to invisible lines and planes.”
“But Plutarch manages to have it both ways; he admires geometry and at the same time considers that the usefulness of mechanics resides, not in adding to the amenities of life, but in holding up to the ignorant a clear and visible pattern of the invisible principles. The fact that Archimedes’ engines were of military use to his king is not felt to be so important” pp 204,5.
Comment
An example of the idealist distaste for the real world, and preference for the world of pure ideas: if idealists got thier way, I'm sure we'd still be walking in sandals instead of driving our cars!
I think that there are strong threads within Christain theology where idealism has supplanted a biblical take on reality, which is one of the aspects of biblical creation theology, IMO, that points us to the real world, rather than the make believe world of paganism.
