All That Glitters is Not Gold, But Some Few Truths Are Necessarily Enduring

I have been justly criticized of late for not expressly "unpacking" (as the current argot goes) my thoughts so as to make them comprehensible for the uninitiated. So I have decided to explicate the revolutionary dialogue of Plato, the Meno, that stands out in human history as embodying precisely the principle of imparting profound truths to the "everyman," so to speak. Please bear with me I will enlarge upon why this theme is of fundamental importance shortly. I am hopeful you, dear reader, will take away something of lasting value from this discussion. 

The profound leap in human history that this dialogue represents cannot be underestimated. For it challenges the very underpinnings of the arbitrary and destructive rule by a monied oligarchy. This is not to say that I am merely alluding to conditions prevailing at the epoch of Plato and Socrates. To wit: if it is the case that any human can be proven to naturally possess the power to mentally reconstruct the most advanced concepts of civilization, then indeed all men are created equal. I will come back to that last statement as it seemingly contradicts the well known words of America's Declaration of Independence.

Socrates engages in a dialogue with Meno and his uneducated slave boy. The proof that the slave reconstructs comes from a breakthrough in geometrical knowledge of the Egyptians. The question is by what method can the area of a square be doubled? By nature, no one of a certain age is at a loss to comprehend the universal geometric idea of what a square is.  A corollary would stand to reason that the same would apply to a circle and so on. So Socrates proceeds to guide the slave to find the answer through drawing out the proof in the sand that the only answer that may be constructed so that there is no doubt comes from the use of the diagonal as the new side of square with the doubled area. 

Now, in doing so the slave has proved the Pythagorean theorem that nowadays every school child learns to repeat. "A squared plus B squared equals C squared." However, almost no children are walked through this Socratic proof, but instead are expected to produce the algebraic formula upon demand. I, for instance, got a scholarship to major in mathematics at the University at Buffalo without ever having been initiated into the non algebraic or synthetic geometric proof . Yet the proof is egregiously simple once it is grasped by the mind (or soul, if you will.)

This brings me back to issue of self evident proofs. Leibniz speaks about irreducible ideas that are incapable of being simplified into component parts and therefore are indeed self evident. The foremost among these are that the human soul, i.e. that our shared mental, conscious creative reason, is by its very nature indivisible. It has no parts. Can this be somehow be proven otherwise? Well, many pedantic academics, like the asses in Goya's cartoons, have tried and will continue to do so as long as they are paid for it. They have hard to comprehend theories about how intelligence is an "emergent" property of the complexity of systems of neurons in the brain, for example. For many, the ability to cleverly and convincingly retell such far fetched theories upon demand will obtain the parroting student a degree and perhaps tenure as a doctor of complexity theory at the most prestigious universities in the land. But in essence this is all so much worthless drivel based upon the logic of provably false premises, if you would but honestly look within. 

The truth is that there is a universal efficient power above the arbitrary rule of any would be oligarchy. That truth is wonderfully and beautifully intelligible. It is profoundly and ironically simple such that any human mind might partake of it. And it is embodied in the principle of the Republic. The creation of a self governing society to do the good so that humanity and its posterity will increasingly come into conformity in an ever more perfect union that is indeed inscribed in the principle that all men are created equal. 

I hope I may have somewhat clarified to some degree whatever has been heretofore cloudy, misty or murky in my many posts here in this blog, ironically named in honor of the genius of Edgar Poe's Thingumbobesquire. 

Poe's tomb in Baltimore, where I used to stroll by daily while working nearby