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PLATO

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{{otheruses}} Image:Delphi Platon statue 1.jpg thumb|Plato '''Plato''' (Greek language Greek: '''Î Î»Î¬Ï„Ï‰Î½''', ''PlÃ¡tÅ?n'') (c.427 BC 427–c.347 BC) was an immensely influential Ancient Greece ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens where Aristotle studied. Plato lectured extensively at the Academy, and wrote on many philosophical issues, dealing especially in political philosophy politics, ethics, metaphysics and epistemology. The most important writings of Plato are his dialogues, although a handful of epigrams also survived, and some letters have been discovered under his name. It is believed that all of Plato's authentic dialogues survive. However, some dialogues ascribed to Plato by the Greeks are now considered by the consensus of scholars to be either suspect (e.g., ''Alcibiades (dialogues) First Alcibiades'', ''Clitophon (dialogue) Clitophon'') or probably spurious (such as ''Demodocus (dialogue) Demodocus'', or the ''Alcibiades (dialogues) Second Alcibiades''). The letters are all considered to probably be spurious, with the possible exception of the Seventh Letter. The dialogues of Plato are lively, often humorous or ironic, full of memorable characters and humble detail. It is generally agreed that Plato is the most enjoyable of philosophers to read. Socrates is often a character in the dialogues of Plato. How much of the content and argument of any given dialogue is Socrates' point of view, and how much of it is Plato's, is heavily disputed, since Socrates himself did not write down his teachings; this ambiguity is often referred to as the "Socratic problem". However, Plato was doubtless strongly influenced by Socrates' teachings, so many of the ideas presented, at least in his early works, were likely borrowings or adaptations.

Biography
Plato was born in Athens or Aegina in May or December in 428 BC 428 or 427 BC. He was raised in a moderately well-to-do aristocratic family. His father was named Ariston, and his mother Perictione. His family claimed descent from the ancient King of Athens Athenian kings, and he was related — though there is disagreement as to exactly how — to the prominent politician Critias. According to a late Hellenistic account by Diogenes Laertius, Plato's given name was ''Aristocles'', whereas his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, dubbed him "Platon", meaning "broad" on account of his robust figure. Diogenes mentions alternative accounts that Plato derived his name from the breadth (''platutÃªs'') of his eloquence, or else because he was very wide (''platus'') across the forehead. According to Dicaearchus, Plato wrestled at the Isthmian games. Such was his learning and ability that the ancient Greeks declared him to be the son of Apollo and told how, in his infancy, bees had settled on his lips, as prophecy of the honeyed words which were to flow from them. Plato became a pupil of Socrates in his youth, and—at least according to his own account—he attended his master's trial, though not his execution. He was deeply affected by the city's treatment of Socrates, and much of his early work records his memories of his teacher. It is suggested that much of his ethics ethical writing is in pursuit of a society where similar injustices could not occur. During the twelve years following the death of Socrates, he traveled extensively in Italy, Sicily, Egypt, and Cyrene in a quest for knowledge. After his return to Athens at the age of forty, Plato founded one of the earliest known organized schools in Western civilization on a plot of land in the Grove of Academe. The Academy was "a large enclosure of ground which was once the property of a citizen at Athens named Academus... some, however, say that it received its name from an ancient hero" (Robinson, Arch. Graec. I i 16), and it operated until 529, when it was closed by Justinian I of Byzantium, who saw it as a threat to the propagation of Christianity. Many intellectuals were schooled in the Academy, the most prominent one being Aristotle. Plato was also deeply influenced by a number of prior philosophers, including: the Pythagoreans, whose notions of numerical harmony have clear echoes in Plato's notion of the Forms; Anaxagoras, who taught Socrates and who held that the mind, or reason, pervades everything; and Parmenides, who argued for the unity of all things and may have influenced Plato's concept of the soul.

Work
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Themes
Unlike Socrates, Plato wrote down his philosophical views, leaving behind a considerable number of manuscripts. In Plato's writings are debates concerning the best possible form of government, featuring adherents of aristocracy, democracy, monarchy, as well as other issues. A central theme is the conflict between nature and convention, concerning the role of heredity and the environmental psychology environment on human intelligence (trait) intelligence and personality long before the modern "nature versus nurture" debate began in the time of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, with its modern continuation in such controversial works as ''The Mismeasure of Man'' and ''The Bell Curve''. Another key distinction and theme in the Platonic corpus is the dichotomy between knowledge and opinion, which foreshadow modern debates between David Hume and Immanuel Kant, and has been taken up by postmodernists and their opponents, more commonly as the distinction between the objective and the subjective. Even the story of the lost city or continent of Atlantis came to us as an illustrative story told by Plato in his ''Timaeus'' and ''Critias''. Plato also had a position on the art of writing as opposed to oral communication. This is evidenced in his Phaedrus{{rf|1|Plato1}} dialogue and his Seventh Epistle.{{rf|2|Plato2}} He said that oral communication is superior to the written word, especially in the accuracy of the oral word over the written word and in his Seventh Epistle that nothing of importance should be written down but transmitted orally.

Form and basis
Plato wrote mainly in the form known as dialogue. In the early dialogues, several characters discuss a topic by asking questions of one another. Socrates figures prominently, and a lively, more disorganised form of ''elenchos''/dialectic is present; these are called the Socratic Dialogues. The nature of these dialogues changed a great deal over the course of Plato's life. It is generally agreed that Plato's earlier works are more closely based on Socrates' thought, whereas his later writing increasingly breaks away from the views of his former teacher. In the middle dialogues, Socrates becomes a mouthpiece for Plato's own philosophy, and the question-and-answer style is more ''pro forma'': the main figure represents Plato and the minor characters have little to say except "yes", "of course" and "very true". The late dialogues read more like treatises, and Socrates is often absent or quiet. It is assumed that while some of the early dialogues could be based on Socrates' actual conversations, the later dialogues were written entirely by Plato. The question of which, if any, of the dialogues are truly Socratic is known as the Socratic problem. The ostensible ''mise en scÃ¨ne'' of a dialogue distances both Plato and a given reader from the philosophy being discussed; one can choose between at least two options of perception: either to participate in the dialogues, in the ideas being discussed, or choose to see the content as expressive of the personalities contained within the work. The dialogue format also allows Plato to put unpopular opinions in the mouth of unsympathetic characters, such as Thrasymachus in ''Republic (Plato) The Republic''.

Metaphysics
:''Main article: Platonic idealism'' Platonism has traditionally been interpreted as a form of metaphysical dualism, sometimes referred to as Platonic or Exaggerated Realism. According to this reading, Plato's metaphysics divides the world into two distinct aspects: the intelligible world of "forms", and the perceptual world we see around us. The perceptual world consists of imperfect copies of the intelligible forms or ideas. These forms are unchangeable and perfect, and are only comprehensible by the use of the intellect or understanding — i.e., a capacity of the mind that does not include perception sense-perception or imagination. This division can also be found in Zoroaster Zoroastrian philosophy, in which the dichotomy is referenced as the ''Minu'' (intelligence) and ''Giti'' (perceptual) worlds. The Zoroastrian ideal city, Shahrivar, also exhibits certain similarities with Plato's ''Republic''. The existence and direction of influence here is uncertain; while Zoroaster lived well before Plato, few of the earliest writings of Zoroastrianism survive unaltered. Image:PlatosCave.gif thumb|390px|Illustrating Plato's Allegory of the Cave In the ''Republic'' Books VI and VII, Plato uses a number of metaphors to explain his metaphysical views: the Plato's metaphor of the sun metaphor of the sun, the well-known Plato's allegory of the cave allegory of the cave, and most explicitly, the divided line of Plato the divided line. Taken together, these metaphors convey a complex, and, in places, difficult theory: there is something called The Form of the Good (often interpreted as Plato's god), which is the ultimate object of knowledge and which, as it were, sheds light on all the other forms (i.e., universal (metaphysics) universals: abstraction abstract kind (word) kinds and attributes), and from which all other forms "emanate". The Form of the Good does this in somewhat the same way as the sun sheds light on, or makes visible and "generates" things, in the perceptual world. In the perceptual world, the particular objects we see around us bear only a dim resemblance to the more ultimately real forms of Plato's intelligible world; it is as if we are seeing shadows of cut-out shapes on the walls of a cave, which are mere representations of the reality outside the cave, illuminated by the sun. We can imagine everything in the universe represented on a line of increasing reality; it is divided once in the middle, and then once again in each of the resulting parts. The first division represents that between the intelligible and the perceptual worlds. This is followed by a corresponding division in each of these worlds: the segment representing the perceptual world is divided into segments representing "real things" on the one hand, and shadows, reflections, and representations on the other. Similarly, the segment representing the intelligible world is divided into segments representing first principles and most general forms, on the one hand, and more derivative, "reflected" forms, on the other. (See the divided line of Plato) Plato's metaphysics, and particularly its dualism between the intelligible and the perceptual, would inspire later Neoplatonism Neoplatonist thinkers, such as Plotinus and Gnosticism Gnostics, and many other metaphysical realists. Although Platonist philosophers like Plotinus rejected Gnosticism (see Plotinus' ''Enneads''). One reason being the Gnostic vilification of nature and Plato's demiurge from ''Timaeus (dialogue) Timaeus''. Plato also influenced Saint Justin Martyr. For more on Platonic realism in general, see Platonic realism and the Forms. Although this interpretation of Plato's writings (particularly the ''Republic'') has enjoyed immense popularity throughout the long history of Western philosophy, it is also possible to interpret his suggestions more conservatively, favoring a more epistemological than metaphysical reading of such famous metaphors as the Cave and the Divided Line. There are obvious parallels between the Cave allegory and the life of Plato's teacher Socrates (who was killed in his attempt to "open the eyes" of the Athenians). This example reveals the dramatic complexity that often lies under the surface of Plato's writing (remember that in the ''Republic'', it is Socrates who relates the story.).

Epistemology
{{main|Platonic epistemology}} Plato also had some influential opinions on the nature of knowledge and learning which he propounded in the ''Meno (Plato) Meno'', which began with the question of whether virtue can be taught, and proceeded to expound the concepts of recollection, learning as the discovery of pre-existing knowledge, and right opinion, opinions which are correct but have no clear justification. Plato stated that knowledge is essentially justified true belief, an influential belief which informed future developments in epistemology. In the Theaetetus, Plato argued that belief is to be distinguished from knowledge on account of justification. Many years later, Edmund Gettier famously demonstrated the problems of the justified true belief account of knowledge.

The state
Plato's philosophical views had many society societal implications, especially on the idea of an ideal state or government. There is some discrepancy between his early and later views. Some of the most famous doctrines are contained in the ''Republic'' during his middle period. Plato asserts that societies have a tripartite class structure corresponding to the appetite/spirit/reason structure of the individual soul. *''Productive'' (Workers) — the labourers, carpenters, plumbers, masons, merchants, farmers, ranchers, etc. These correspond to the "appetite" part of the soul. *''Protective'' (Warriors) — those who are adventurous, strong, brave, in love with danger; in the armed forces. These correspond to the "spirit" part of the soul. *''Governing'' (Rulers) — those who are intelligent, rational, self-controlled, in love with wisdom, well suited to make decisions for the community. These correspond to the "reason" part of the soul and are very few. According to this model, the principles of Athens Athenian democracy (as it existed in his day) are rejected as only a few are fit to rule. Instead of rhetoric and persuasion, Plato says reason and wisdom should govern. This does not equate to tyranny, despotism, or oligarchy, however. As Plato puts it: :"Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race." (''Republic'' 473c-d) Plato describes these "philosopher kings" as "those who love the sight of truth" (''Republic'' 475c) and supports the idea with the analogy of a captain and his ship or a doctor and his medicine. Sailing and health are not things that everyone is qualified to practice by nature. A large part of the ''Republic'' then addresses how the educational system should be set up to produce these philosopher kings. However, it must be taken into account that the ideal city outlined in the ''Republic'' is qualified by Socrates as the ideal ''luxurious'' city, examined to determine how it is that injustice and justice grow in a city (''Republic'' 372e). According to Socrates, the "true" and "healthy" city is instead the one first outlined in book II of the ''Republic'', 369c-372d, containing farmers, craftsmen, merchants, and wage-earners, but lacking the guardian class of philosopher-kings as well as delicacies such as "perfumed oils, incense, prostitutes, and pastries", in addition to paintings, gold, ivory, couches, a multitude of occupations such as poets and hunters, and war.

Platonic scholarship
Image:Plato.png Alfred North Whitehead.html" title="Meaning of thumb thumb|"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." â€”[[Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929.html" title="Meaning of "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." â€”[[Alfred North Whitehead">thumb|"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." â€”[[Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929">"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." â€”[[Alfred North Whitehead">thumb|"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." â€”[[Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929 Plato's thought is often compared with that of his most famous student, Aristotle, whose reputation during the Western Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato that the Scholasticism Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the Philosopher". However, in the Byzantine Empire, the study of Plato continued. The Medieval scholastic philosophers did not have access to the works of Plato—nor the knowledge of Greek language Greek needed to read them. Plato's original writings were essentially lost to Western civilization until they were brought from Constantinople in the century before its fall, by George Gemistos Plethon. Medieval scholars knew of Plato only through translations into Latin from the translations into Arabic language Arabic by Iran Persian and Arab scholars. These scholars not only translated the texts of the ancients, but expanded them by writing extensive commentary commentaries and interpretations on Plato's and Aristotle's works (see Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes). Only in the Renaissance, with the general resurgence of interest in classical civilization, did knowledge of Plato's philosophy become widespread again in the West. Many of the greatest early modern scientists and artists who broke with Scholasticism and fostered the flowering of the Renaissance, with the support of the Plato-inspired Lorenzo de Medici, saw Plato's philosophy as the basis for progress in the arts and sciences. By the 19th century, Plato's reputation was restored, and at least on par with Aristotle's. Notable Western philosophers have continued to draw upon Plato's work since that time. Plato's influence has been especially strong in mathematics and the sciences. It inspired the greatest advances in logic since Aristotle, due to Gottlob Frege and his followers Kurt GÃ¶del, Alonzo Church, and Alfred Tarski, the last of whom summarised his approach by reversing Aristotle's famous declaration of sedition from the Academy: ''Inimicus Plato, sed magis inimica falsitas'' ("Plato is an enemy, but falsehood is yet a greater enemy"). Albert Einstein drew on Plato's understanding of an immutable reality that underlies the flux of appearances for his objections to the probabilistic picture of the physical universe propounded by Niels Bohr in his interpretation of quantum mechanics. Conversely, thinkers that diverged from ontology ontological models and moral ideals in their own philosophy, have tended to disparage Platonism from more or less informed perspectives. Thus Friedrich Nietzsche attacked Plato's moral and political theories, Martin Heidegger argued against Plato's alleged obfuscation of ''Being'', and Karl Popper argued in ''The Open Society and Its Enemies'' (1945) that Plato's proposal for a government system in the ''Republic'' was prototypically totalitarianism totalitarian.

Bibliography
Plato's writings (most of them dialogues) have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts. Those works ascribed to Plato that have a separate article can be found in :Category:Dialogues of Plato

By tetralogy
One tradition regarding the arrangement of Plato's texts is according to tetralogy tetralogies. This scheme is ascribed by Diogenes Laertius to an ancient scholar and court astrologer to Tiberius named Thrasyllus. In the list below, works by Plato are marked (1) if there is no consensus among scholars as to whether Plato is the author, and (2) if scholars generally agree that Plato is ''not'' the author of the work. Unmarked works are assumed to have been written by Plato.

=Tetralogies
= *I. ''Euthyphro'', ''Apology (Plato) (The) Apology (of Socrates)'', ''Crito'', ''Phaedo'' *II. ''Cratylus'', ''Theaetetus (dialogue) Theaetetus'', ''Sophist (dialogue) Sophist'', ''Statesman (dialogue) Statesman'' *III. ''Parmenides (dialogue) Parmenides'', ''Philebus'', ''Symposium (Plato dialogue) (The) Symposium'', ''Phaedrus (dialogue) Phaedrus'' *IV. ''Alcibiades (dialogues) First Alcibiades'' (1), ''Alcibiades (dialogues) Second Alcibiades'' (2), ''Hipparchus (dialogue) Hipparchus'' (2), ''Rival Lovers (The) (Rival) Lovers'' (2) *V. ''Theages'' (2), ''Charmides (dialogue) Charmides'', ''Laches (dialogue) Laches'', ''Lysis (dialogue) Lysis'' *VI. ''Euthydemus (dialogue) Euthydemus'', ''Protagoras (dialogue) Protagoras'', ''Gorgias (dialogue) Gorgias'', ''Meno'' *VII. ''Hippias (dialogues) (Greater) Hippias (major)'' (1), ''Hippias (dialogues) (Lesser) Hippias (minor)'', ''Ion (dialogue) Ion'', ''Menexenus'' *VIII. ''Clitophon'' (1), ''Republic (dialogue) (The) Republic'', ''Timaeus (dialogue) Timaeus'', ''Critias (dialogue) Critias'' *IX. ''Minos (dialogue) Minos'' (2), ''Laws (dialogue) (The) Laws'', ''Epinomis'' (2), ''Letters (Plato) Letters'' (1)

=Works not in tetralogies
= The remaining works were transmitted under Plato's name, most of them already considered spurious in antiquity: *''Axiochus'' (2), ''Definitions (Plato) Definitions'' (2), ''Demodocus (dialogue) Demodocus'' (2), ''Epigrams (Plato) Epigrams'', ''Eryxias'' (2), ''Halcyon (dialogue) Halcyon'' (2), ''On Justice'' (2), ''On Virtue'' (2), ''Sisyphus (dialogue) Sisyphus'' (2)

Stephanus pagination
The usual system for making unique references to sections of the text by Plato derives from a 16th century edition of Plato's works by Henri Estienne Henricus Stephanus. An overview of Plato's writings according to this system can be found in the Stephanus pagination article.

Chronology
The exact order in which Plato's dialogues were written is not known, nor is the extent to which some might have been later revised and rewritten. However, there is enough information internal to the dialogues to form a rough chronology. The dialogues are normally grouped into three fairly distinct periods, with a few of them considered transitional works, and some just difficult to place. Many of the positions in this ordering are still highly disputed.

=Early dialogues
= Socrates figures in all of these, and they are considered the most faithful representations of the historical Socrates; hence they are also called the Socratic dialogues. Most of them consist of Socrates discussing a subject, often an ethical one (friendship, piety) with a friend or with someone presumed to be an expert on it. Through a series of questions he will show that they don't apparently understand it at all. This period also includes several pieces surrounding the trial and execution of Socrates. *''Apology (Plato) Apology'' *''Crito'' *''Charmides (dialogue) Charmides'' *''Laches (dialogue) Laches'' *''Lysis (dialogue) Lysis'' *''Euthyphro'' *''Menexenus'' *''Lesser Hippias'' *''Ion (dialogue) Ion'' The following are variously considered transitional or middle period dialogues: *''Gorgias (dialogue) Gorgias'' *''Protagoras (dialogue) Protagoras'' *''Meno''

Middle dialogues
Late in the early dialogues Plato's Socrates actually begins supplying answers to some of the questions he asks, or putting forth positive doctrines. This is generally seen as the first appearance of Plato's own views. The first of these, that goodness is wisdom and that no one does evil willingly, was perhaps Socrates' own view. What becomes most prominent in the middle dialogues is the idea that knowledge comes of grasping unchanging forms or essences, paired with the attempts to investigate such essences. The immortality of the soul, and specific doctrines about justice, truth, and beauty, begin appearing here. The Symposium and the Republic (dialogue) Republic are considered the centrepieces of Plato's middle period. *''Euthydemus (dialogue) Euthydemus'' *''Cratylus'' *''Phaedo'' *''Phaedrus (dialogue) Phaedrus'' *''Symposium (Plato dialogue) Symposium'' *''Republic (dialogue) Republic'' *''Theaetetus (dialogue) Theaetetus'' *''Parmenides (dialogue) Parmenides''

=Late dialogues
= The ''Parmenides'' presents a series of criticisms of the theory of Forms which are widely taken to indicate Plato's abandonment of the doctrine. Some recent publications (e.g., Meinwald (1991)) have challenged this characterisation. In most of the remaining dialogues the theory is either absent or at least appears under a different guise in discussions about kinds or classes of things (the ''Timaeus'' may be an important, and hence controversially placed, exception). Socrates is either absent or a minor figure in the discussion. An apparently new method for doing dialectic known as "collection and division" is also featured, most notably in the ''Sophist'' and ''Politicus'', explicitly for the first time in the ''Phaedrus'', and possibly in the ''Philebus''. There is a question about the efficacy of the method for arriving at the answers to philosophical questions; it appears to rely for its results on little more than what its practitioners already believe or find intuitively plausible. In that case it is not clear how it can bring about any progress on matters under discussion, and it has been suggested that the method is a sign of Plato's failing philosophical powers in his later life. It is far more likely, though, that scholars have simply yet to arrive at an adequate characterisation of the method. A basic description of collection and division would go as follows: interlocutors attempt to discern the similarities and differences among things in order to get clear idea about what they in fact are. One understanding, suggested in some passages of the ''Sophist'', is that this is what philosophy is always in the business of doing, and is doing even in the early dialogues. The late dialogues are also an important place to look for Plato's mature thought on most of the issues dealt with in the earlier dialogues. There is much work still to be done by scholars on the working out of what these views are. The later works are agreed to be difficult and challenging pieces of philosophy. On the whole they are more sober and logical than earlier works, but may hold out the promise of steps towards a solution to problems which were systematically laid out in prior works. *''Sophist (dialogue) Sophist'' *''Statesman (dialogue) Statesman'' *''Philebus'' *''Timaeus (dialogue) Timaeus'' *''Critias (dialogue) Critias'' *''Laws (dialogue) Laws''

Loeb Classical Library
James Loeb provided a very popular edition of Plato's works, still in print in the 21st century: see Loeb Classical Library#Plato for how Plato's works were named in Loeb's publications. {{academia |teachers=Socrates |students=Aristotle
Theophrastus }}

See also
{{wikiquote}} * Wikisource:el:Î Î»Î¬Ï„Ï‰Î½ Greek texts * List of publications in philosophy#Western philosophy Important publications in Western philosophy * Mitchell Miller * Alexander Nehamas * Platonic love

Footnotes
*{{ent|1|Plato1}} Plato, ''Phaedrus'', "the living word of knowledge which has a soul, and of which the written word is properly no more than an image" *{{ent|2|Plato2}} Plato, ''Seventh Epistle'', "Therefore every man of worth, when dealing with matters of worth, will be far from exposing them to ill feeling and misunderstanding among men by committing them to writing." [http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/seventh_letter.html]

References
*{{cite book | author=Cooper, John M. & Hutchinson, D. S. (Eds.) | title=Plato: Complete Works | publisher=Hackett Publishing Co., Inc | year=1997 | id=ISBN 0872203492}} *{{cite book | author=Durant, Will | title=The Story of Philosophy | publisher=Simon & Schuster | year=1926 | id=ISBN 0671695002}} *{{cite book | author=Hamilton, Edith & Cairns, Huntington (Eds.) | title=The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters | publisher=Princeton Univ. Press | year=1961 | id=ISBN 0691097186}} *{{cite book | author=Jackson, Roy | title=Plato: A Beginner's Guide | publisher=London: Hoder & Stroughton | year=2001 | id=ISBN 0-340-80385-1}} *{{cite book | author=Kraut, Richard (Ed.) | title=The Cambridge Companion to Plato | publisher=Cambridge University Press | year=1993 | id=ISBN 0521436109}} *{{cite book | author=Melchert, Norman | title=The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy | publisher=McGraw Hill | year=2002 | id=ISBN 0195175107}} *{{cite book | author=Meinwald, Constance Chu | title=Plato's Parmenides | publisher=Oxford University Press | year=1991 | id=ISBN 0195064453 }} *Oxford University Press publishes scholarly editions of Plato's Greek texts in the ''Oxford Classical Texts'' series, and some translations in the ''Clarendon Plato Series''. *Harvard University Press publishes the hardbound series ''Loeb Classical Library#Plato Loeb Classical Library'', containing Plato's works in Greek language Greek, with English translations on facing pages.
- Les Belles Lettres also publishes Plato's complete works in Greek with French translations. *{{cite book | author=Smith, William. | title=Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology | publisher=University of Michigan/Online version | year=1867 - original }}

External links
{{commons|Plato}} * {{gutenberg author| id=Plato | name=Plato}} *
- Works by Plato at Project Gutenberg *
- Spurious and doubtful works at Project Gutenberg * {{PerseusAuthor|Plato}}
- Plato Audio Bibliography *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: *
- Plato *
- Plato's Ethics *
- Friendship and Eros *
- Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology *
- Plato on Utopia *
- Rhetoric and Poetry *Other articles *
- Excerpt from W.K.C. Guthrie, ''A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. IV, Plato: the man and his dialogues, earlier period'', Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 8-38 Category:347 BC deaths Category:427 BC births Category:Ancient Athenians Category:Ancient Greek philosophers Category:Educationists Category:Platonism af:Plato ar:Ø£Ù?Ù„Ø§Ø·ÙˆÙ† bg:ÐŸÐ»Ð°Ñ‚Ð¾Ð½ ba:ÐŸÐ»Ð°Ñ‚Ð¾Ð½ bn:à¦ªà§?à¦²à§‡à¦Ÿà§‹ bs:Platon ca:PlatÃ³ cs:PlatÃ³n cy:Plato da:Platon de:Platon et:Platon el:Î Î»Î¬Ï„Ï‰Î½ es:PlatÃ³n eo:Platono eu:Platon fa:Ø§Ù?Ù„Ø§Ø·ÙˆÙ† fr:Platon ga:PlatÃ³n gl:PlatÃ³n ko:í”Œë?¼í†¤ hr:Platon io:Platon ilo:Plato id:Plato is:Platon it:Platone he:×?×¤×œ×˜×•×Ÿ jv:Plato ka:áƒžáƒšáƒ?áƒ¢áƒ?áƒœáƒ˜ la:Plato lv:Platons lt:Platonas hu:PlatÃ³n mk:ÐŸÐ»Ð°Ñ‚Ð¾Ð½ ms:Plato nl:Plato nds:Platon ja:ãƒ—ãƒ©ãƒˆãƒ³ no:Platon pl:Platon pt:PlatÃ£o ro:Platon ru:ÐŸÐ»Ð°Ñ‚Ð¾Ð½ scn:Platoni simple:Plato sk:PlatÃ³n sl:Platon sr:ÐŸÐ»Ð°Ñ‚Ð¾Ð½ fi:Platon sv:Platon ta:à®ªà®¿à®³à¯‡à®Ÿà¯?à®Ÿà¯‹ th:à¹€à¸žà¸¥à¹‚à¸• vi:Platon tr:Platon uk:ÐŸÐ»Ð°Ñ‚Ð¾Ð½ zh:æŸ?æ‹‰å›¾ {{merge|Plato computer}} {{otheruses}} '''PLATO''', an apronym for ''Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations'', was one of the first generalized Computer assisted instruction systems, originally built by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University of Illinois (U of I) and later taken over by Control Data Corporation (CDC), who provided the machines it ran on. PLATO ran for many years at the U of I, but CDC President William Norris' plans to make it a major force in the computing world and a keystone of corporate social responsibility failed. Although the project was economically a failure and supplanted by other technologies when it was finally turned off in the 1990s, PLATO nevertheless pioneered key concepts such as online forums and message boards, online testing, email, chat rooms, picture languages, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multiplayer online games.

Background
Prior to the 1960s, university education was limited to a tiny minority of the population. But the future trend to much larger enrollment in higher education was already clear in the early 1950s, and the problem of providing for an influx of new students was a serious concern. A number of people proposed that if the computer could increase the capabilities of the factory via automation, then surely it could do the same for education. In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, and the United States suddenly felt a collective sense of educational inferiority. The result was massive spending on science and engineering education; computer-based education along with it. In 1958 the US Air Force's Office of Scientific Research held a conference on the topic at the University of Pennsylvania, and a number of groupsâ€”notably IBMâ€”presented studies on the topic.

PLATO's birth
Chalmers Sherwin, a physicist at the University of Illinois, suggested a computerized learning system to William Everett, Dean of the College of Engineering. Everett recommended that Daniel Alpert, another physicist, convene a meeting on the topic that included engineers, educators, mathematicians, and psychologists. After several weeks of meetings the group was unable to suggest a single design for such a system. Alpert was unhappy with the results, but before announcing their failure he mentioned the meetings to a lab assistant, Donald Bitzer. Bitzer claimed that he had already been thinking about the problem, and suggested that he could build a demonstration system. Bitzer, regarded as the "father of PLATO", succeeded largely due to his rejection of "modern" educational thinking. Returning to a basic drill-based system, his team improved on existing systems by allowing students to bypass lessons they already understood. Their first system, '''PLATO I''' first ran on the locally-built ILLIAC I computer in 1960. It included a TV for display and a special keyboard to navigate the system's menus. In 1961 they introduced '''PLATO II''', which ran two users at once. Convinced of the value of the project, the PLATO system entered a major redesign between 1963 and 1966. The new '''PLATO III''' allowed "anyone" to design new lesson modules using their TUTOR programming language, brainchild of Paul Tenczar. Built on a CDC 1604 which had been given to them for free by William Norris, PLATO III could run up to 20 lessons at once, and was used by a number of local facilities in Urbana-Champaign that could be attached to the system with their custom terminals.

NSF involvement
PLATO I, II and III had been funded by small grants from a combined Army-Navy-Air Force funding pool, but by the time PLATO III was in operation everyone involved was convinced it was worthwhile to scale up the project. Accordingly, in 1967 the National Science Foundation granted the team steady funding, allowing Bitzer to set up the ''Computer-based Education Research Laboratory'' (CERL) at the university. In 1972 a new system named '''PLATO IV''' was ready for operation. The PLATO IV terminal was a major innovation. It included Bitzer's orange plasma display invention which incorporated both memory and bitmapped graphics into one display. This plasma display included fast vector line drawing capability and ran at 1260 baud, rendering 60 lines or 180 characters per second. The characters were computer-drawn on a 512x512 grid, and the users could provide their own characters to support rudimentary raster graphics. A powered color microfiche system supplied "background graphics" by changing slides behind the see-through display with compressed air. Invariably the air tank ran out and the classroom would be rendered inoperable. The PLATO IV display also included a 16-by-16 grid infrared touch panel allowing students to answer questions by touching anywhere on the screen. Early in 1972, researchers from Xerox PARC were given a tour of the PLATO system at the University of Illinois. At this time they were shown parts of the system such as the '''Show Display''' application generator for pictures on PLATO (later translated into a "Doodle" program at PARC), and the '''Charset Editor''' for "painting" new characters, and the '''Term Talk''' and '''Monitor Mode''' communications program. Many of the new technologies they saw were adopted and improved upon when these researchers returned to Palo Alto, CA. By 1975 the PLATO System served almost 150 locations from a donated CDC 6600, including not only the users of the PLATO III system, but a number of grammar schools, high schools, colleges and universities, and military installations. PLATO IV offered text, graphics and animation as intrinsic components of courseware content, and included a shared-memory construct ("common" variables) that allowed TUTOR programs to send data between various users. This latter construct was used both for chat-type programs, as well as the first multi-user flight simulator. With the introduction of PLATO IV, Bitzer declared general success, claiming that the goal of generalized computer instruction was now available to all. However the terminals were very expensive (about $12,000), so as a generalized system PLATO would likely need to be scaled down for cost reasons alone.

The CDC years
As PLATO IV reached production quality, William Norris became increasingly interested in it as a potential product. His interest was two-fold. From a strict business perspective, he was evolving Control Data into a service-based company instead of a hardware one, and was increasingly convinced that computer-based education would become a major market in the future. At the same time, Norris was upset by the unrest of the late 1960s, and felt that much of it was due to social inequalities that needed to be addressed. PLATO offered a solution by providing higher education to segments of the population that would otherwise never be able to afford university. Norris provided CERL with machines on which to develop their system in the late 1960s. In 1971 he set up a new division within CDC to develop PLATO "courseware", and eventually many of CDC's own initial training and technical manuals ran on it. In 1974 PLATO was running on in-house machines at CDC headquarters in Minneapolis, and in 1976 they purchased the commercial rights in exchange for a new CDC Cyber machine. CDC announced the acquisition soon after, claiming that by 1985 50% of the company's income would be related to PLATO services. Through the 1970s CDC tirelessly promoted PLATO, both as a commercial tool and one for re-training unemployed workers in new fields. Norris refused to give up on the system, and invested in several non-mainsteam courses, including a crop-information system for farmers, and various courses for inner-city youth. CDC even went as far as to place PLATO terminals in some shareholder's houses, to demonstrate the concept of the system. In the early 1980s CDC started heavily advertising the service, apparently due to increasing internal dissent over the now $600 million project, taking out print and even radio ads promoting it as a general tool. ''The Minneapolis Tribune'' was unconvinced by their ad copy and started an investigation of the claims. In the end they concluded that while it was not proven to be a better education system, everyone using it nevertheless enjoyed it at least. An official evaluation by an external testing agency ended with roughly the same conclusions, suggesting that everyone enjoyed using it, but it was essentially equal to an average human teacher in terms of student advancement. Of course a computerized system equal to a human should have been a major achievement, the very concept that the early pioneers in CBT were aiming for. A computer could serve all the students in a school for the cost of maintaining it, and wouldn't go on strike. However CDC charged $50 an hour for access to their data center, in order to recoup some of their development costs, making it considerably more expensive than a human on a per-student basis. PLATO was therefore a failure in any real sense, although it did find some use in large companies and government agencies willing to invest in the technology. An attempt to mass-market the PLATO system was introduced in 1980 as '''Micro-PLATO''', which ran the basic TUTOR system on a CDC "Viking-721" terminal and various home computers. Versions were built for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, Atari 8-bit family, S-100 bus Zenith Z-100 and (later)Radio Shack TRS-80 & IBM PC. Micro-PLATO could be used stand-alone for normal courses, or could connect to a CDC data center for multiuser programs. To make the latter affordable, CDC introduced the '''Homelink''' service for $5 an hour. In 1986 Norris stepped down as CEO, and the PLATO service was slowly killed off. He tirelessly supported it to the end, announcing that it would be only a few years before it represented a major source of income for CDC as late as 1984. Nevertheless he later claimed that Micro-PLATO was one of the reasons PLATO got off-track. They had started on the TI-99/4A, but then TI pulled the plug and they moved to other systems like the Atari, who soon did the same. He felt that it was a waste of time anyway, as the system's value was in its online nature, which Micro-PLATO lacked (at least to start). Bitzer was more forthright about CDC's failure, blaming their corporate culture for the problems. He noted that development of the courseware was averaging $300,000 per delivery hour, many times what the CERL was paying for similar products. This meant that CDC had to charge high prices in order to recoup their costs, prices that made the system unattractive. The reason, he suggested, for these high prices was that CDC had set up a division that had to keep itself profitable via courseware development, forcing them to raise the prices in order to keep their headcount up during slow periods.

PLATO in South Africa
During the period when CDC was marketing PLATO, the system began to be used internationally. South Africa was one of the biggest users of PLATO in the early 1980s. ESCOM, the South African electrical power company, had a large CDC mainframe at Megawatt Park in the northwest suburbs of Johannesburg. Mainly this computer was used for management and data processing tasks related to power generation and distribution, but it also ran the PLATO software. The largest PLATO installation in South Africa during the early 1980s was at the University of the Western Cape, which served a "coloured" population, and at one time had hundreds of PLATO IV terminals all connected by leased data lines back to Johannesburg. There were several other installations at educational institutions in South Africa, among them Madadeni College in the Madadeni township just outside of Newcastle, South Africa Newcastle. This was perhaps the most unusual PLATO installation anywhere. Madadeni had about 1,000 students, all of them black and 99.5% of Zulu ancestry. The college was one of 10 teacher preparation institutions in kwaZulu, most of them much smaller. In many ways Madadeni was very primitive. None of the classrooms had electricity and there was only one telephone for the whole college, which one had to crank for several minutes before an operator might come on the line. So an air-conditioned, carpeted room with 16 computer terminals was a stark contrast to the rest of the college. At times the only way a person could communicate with the outside world was through PLATO term-talk. For many of the Madadeni students, most of whom came from very rural areas, the PLATO terminal was the first time they encountered any kind of electronic technology. (Many of the first year students had never seen a flush toilet before.) There initially was skepticism that these technologically-illiterate students could effectively use PLATO, but those concerns were not borne out. Within an hour or less most students were using the system proficiently, mostly to learn math and science skills, although a lesson that taught keyboarding skills was one of the most popular. A few students even used on-line resources to learn TUTOR, the PLATO programming language, and a few wrote lessons on the system in the Zulu language. PLATO was also used fairly extensively in South Africa for industrial training. ESCOM successfully used PLM (PLATO learning management) and simulations to train power plant operators, South African Airways (SAA) used PLATO simulations for cabin attendant training, and there were a number of other large companies as well that were exploring the use of PLATO. The South African subsidiary of CDC invested heavily in the development of an entire secondary school curriculum (SASSC) on PLATO, but unfortunately as the curriculum was nearing the final stages of completion, CDC began to falter in South Africaâ€”partly because of financial problems back home, partly because of growing opposition in the United States to doing business in South Africa, and partly due to the rapidly evolving microcomputer, a paradigm shift that CDC failed to recognize.

The PLATO Online Community
Although PLATO was designed for computer-based education, many consider its most enduring legacy to be the online community spawned by its communication features. PLATO Notes, introduced in 1973, was among the world's first online message boards, and years later became the direct progenitor of Lotus Notes. By 1976, PLATO had sprouted a variety of novel tools for online communication, including Personal Notes (email), Talkomatic (chat rooms), and Term-Talk (instant messaging and remote screen sharing). PLATO's architecture also made it an ideal platform for online gaming. Many extremely popular games were developed on PLATO during the 1970s and 1980s, such as ''Empire (computer game) Empire'' (a massively multiplayer game based on ''Star Trek''), ''Airfight'' (a precursor to ''Microsoft Flight Simulator''), the original Freecell, and several "dungeons and dragons" games, including dnd (computer game) dnd and MMORPG Moria, that presaged MUDs and MOOs as well as popular shoot-em-up games like Doom and Quake. These communication tools and games formed the basis for a thriving online community of thousands of PLATO users, which lasted for well over twenty years. The history of this community has been documented in much greater detail in David Woolley's article "[http://thinkofit.com/plato/dwplato.htm PLATO: The Emergence of Online Community]." In August of 2004, a version of PLATO (see [http://www.cyber1.org Cyber1.org]) from the 1980-1985 period was resurrected online, and word of its reincarnation spread rapidly. Within 6 months, by word of mouth alone, more than 500 former users had signed up to use the system. Many of the students who used PLATO in the 1970s and 1980s felt a special social bond with the community of users who came together using the powerful communications tools (talk programs, records systems and notes files) on PLATO. The original PLATO IV system had more than 12,000 contact hours of courseware, much of it developed by college professors for higher education. The knowledge embedded in this computer system is immense, even today.

Testing
Testing software developed on PLATO was deployed as the first large-scale computer-based testing system, and turned out to be the most financially viable component of the system. The NASD, private-sector regulator of the UI securities markets, began using PLATO for securities license testing in the 1980s. Use of the testing products grew steadily during that decade, and they were spun off from Control Data Corporation as Drake Training and Technologies in 1989. With the advent of IT certifications programs sponsored by, among others, Novell and Microsoft, the online testing business exploded. Today's market leader, Thomson Prometric, is the direct descendant of the PLATO testing system; the other major company in the market, Pearson VUE, was founded by several PLATO/Prometric veterans. The testing business has continued to grow, adding professional licensure and educational testing as important business segments. A number of smaller testing-related companies also evolved from the PLATO system. One of the few survivors of that group is The Examiner Corporation. Dr. Stanley Trollip (formerly of the University of Illinois Aviation Research Lab) and Gary Brown (formerly of Control Data) developed the prototype of The Examiner System in 1984.

Other versions
CDC eventually sold the "PLATO" trademark and some courseware marketing segment rights to the newly-formed The Roach Organization in 1989. In 2000 TRO changed their name to [http://www.plato.com/ PLATO Learning] and continue to sell and service PLATO courseware running on PC's. CDC continued development of the basic system under the name '''CYBIS''' (CYber-Based Instructional System) after selling the name to Roach, in order to service their commercial and government customers. The University of Illinois also continued development of PLATO, eventually setting up a commercial on-line service called NovaNET in partnership with University Communications University Communications, Inc. CERL was closed in 1994, with the maintenance of the PLATO code passing to UCI. UCI was later renamed NovaNET Learning, which was bought by National Computer Systems. Shortly after that, NCS was bought by Pearson, and after several name changes now operates as Pearson Digital Learning. CDC, meanwhile, sold off their mainframe CYBIS business to University Online, which was a descendant of IMSATT. UOL was later renamed to '''VCampus'''. At the end of 2005, one remaining CDC CYBER mainframe system was still running at the Federal Aviation Administration FAA. VCampus granted non-commercial rights to run CYBIS courseware to Cyber1, operating on a CYBER emulator running NOS, CDC's operating system. This followed limited rights to run NOS being granted by Syntegra (BT), which had inherited the remainder of CDC's mainframe business. Cyber1 offers free access to the system, which contains over 16,000 of the original lessons, in an attempt to preserve the original PLATO communities that grew up at CERL and on CDC systems in the 1980's. PLATO courseware was fairly extensive, covering a full range of high-school and college courses, as well as topics such as reading skills, family planning, Lamaze training and home budgeting. However the most popular "courseware" remained their multi-user games and computer role playing games such as ''dnd (computer game) dnd'', although it appears CDC was uninterested in this market. As the value of a CDC-based solution disappeared in the 1980s, interested educators ported the engine first to the IBM PC, and later to World Wide Web web-based systems. Today, however, even the web-based versions seem to have disappeared.

Innovation
*Plasma display, circa 1964, by Donald Bitzer for PLATO IV *Touch Panel, circa 1964, by Donald Bitzer for PLATO IV *'''Show Display Mode''', a graphics application generator for TUTOR software, precursor to Apple's QuickDraw picture language editor. *'''Charset Editor''', an early version of MacPaint for drawing bitmapped pictures stored in downloadable fonts. *Airfight, circa 1972, a 3-D flight simulator written for PLATO by Brand Fortner; this probably inspired UIUC student Bruce Artwick to start Sublogic which was acquired and later became Microsoft Flight Simulator.
- Empire, a 30 person inter-terminal 2-D real-time space simulation, circa 1974. *'''Monitor Mode''' on PLATO, circa 1975, used by instructors to help students, precursor of Timbuktu screen-sharing software. *'''Notes''', the first general-purpose computer message board, and precursor to Unix Newsgroups, Digital Equipment Corporation Digital DECnotes and Lotus Notes, 1973. *'''Talkomatic''', a 6-person real-time chat room (text-based), precursor to Instant Messaging Conferences, 1974 *'''Term-Talk''', precursor to instant messaging, circa 1974 *dnd (computer game) dnd, 1974-1975, a dungeon crawl game that included the first boss (video game) video game boss. *Panzer, circa 1977, a 3-D tank simulation that spawned Atari's Battlezone game. *Think15, circa 1977, 2-D outdoor wilderness quest simulation, like '''Trek''' with monsters, trees, treasures. *Avatar (computer game) Avatar, circa 1978, a 2.5-D Multi-User Dungeon (MUD), a precursor to EverQuest. *Freecell, circa 1978 by Paul Alfille, which probably spawned the Windows version. *Mahjong solitaire, 1981 by Brodie Lockard, and was popularised in 1986 by Activision as ''Solitaire''.

External links
:[http://thinkofit.com/plato/dwplato.htm PLATO: The Emergence of Online Community] :[http://www.platopeople.com/index.html PLATO People] :[http://www.cbi.umn.edu/iterations/vanmeer.html#I PLATO: From Computer-Based Education to Corporate Social Responsibility] :[http://www.atarimagazines.com/v3n3/platorising.html PLATO RISING - Online learning for Atarians] :[http://www.cyber1.org/ Cyber1.org : An online preservation of the PLATO system, circa 1980.] Category:TI-99/4A es:PLATO

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