Plato is the first scientist whose work we still possess. He is our first writer to interpret the natural world mathematically, and also the first theorist of mathematics in the natural sciences. As no one else before or after, he set out why we should suppose a link between nature and mathematics, a link that has never been stronger than it is today. Mathematical Plato examines how Plato organized and justified the principles, terms, and methods of our mathematical, natural science.
Praise
“Roger Sworder deserves our gratitude for drawing attention to the significance of mathematics in Plato’s thought and writings. He lays the principal discussions out before us with clarity. He also presents Plato as a theorist of nature: of physics and not just metaphysics, to use Aristotle’s distinction. Not all readers, we should admit, will be equally convinced of the usefulness of Plato’s science for today, but they will all be led more deeply into Plato’s vision of reality.” &mdashAndrew Davison, Westcott House, Cambridge University
“Here is Plato for an anti-Platonic age. The author gives careful attention to some of the most important passages in the Platonic dialogues and offers new solutions to some of Plato’s most famous mathematical puzzles. He then considers the implications of these penetrating studies for the philosophy of science, and the natural sciences especially. This is a book that revivifies the core themes of Platonism and restores science to worship. It shows Roger Sworder to be one of the foremost students of Plato writing today, and places him in the noble tradition of Thomas Taylor.”
— RODNEY BLACKHIRST
author of Primordial Alchemy and Modern Religion: Essays on Traditional Cosmology
About the Author
Roger Sworder graduated Master of Arts from the University of Oxford, taking his degree in the study of Classical Philosophy and History. He undertook doctoral studies at the Australian National University with a thesis on Plato’s theory of knowledge. His first book, Mining, Metallurgy and the Meaning of Life, examines the consecration and, more recently, the desecration of these crafts in Western history. Other publications include Science and Religion in Archaic Greece: Homer on Immortality and Parmenides at Delphi, and A Contrary History of the West, both published by Sophia Perennis. He has just released a book of poems, Stop, Don’t Read, published by Connor Court Press. Sworder recently retired as lecturer in the Department of Arts at La Trobe University, Bendigo, where he was a member of a team that provided one of the few courses in traditional studies in the West.
