One Over Many

Greek had a long standing “one over many problem” as they attempt to find a way to utilize 1 word for many different objects that is very different. Plato then came up with this very interesting idea on the Theory of Forms. Philosophers alone were said to have knowledge of Forms. If they study and understand Form, they have attained true knowledge. As without true knowledge everything is only belief and its only what the world appears to be. Forms are said to be universal ideas; unchanging, perfect and eternal. This did reflect Parmenides idea of IT. However, in Forms it doesn’t have to have all qualities.

Lets consider the Universal concept of a chair. Particular objects are said to owe existence to Forms. This reflect the world of Heraclitus, the World of appearances. The universal concept of chair doesn’t change even the chair undergoing process of change. We might have a different idea of the chair in our mind now but its still called a chair. Particular objects are then said to be mere imitations of the Form object. I think this is really amazing as how Plato managed to come up with this concept at that particular point of time given the limited resources and environment that he was in.

“None shall past through this door not knowing geometry” is supposed to be at the entrance of Plato's Academy which i thought was really interesting as Mathematics was considered so important to Plato at that time. Another example would be Triangularity. We can can understand triangle individually as we can measure every single triangle but we only know those that we have seen. However, we know something about Form triangle which helped us understand every triangle like interior angles adding up to 180 degree. All the triangles will then have them otherwise they do not participate in form triangle. This meant that Forms provide necessary condition in objects and helped solve the "one over many problems" in some ways.