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Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of PlatoAuthor: James Myers
Welcome to Plato's Pod, a podcast of discussions on the dialogues of Plato, the philosopher and geometer who wrote nearly 2,400 years ago. Hosted by amateur philosopher James Myers, the first four seasons of the podcast featured group discussions and some incredible insights on many of Plato's works. Now in our fifth season, we continue to probe the philosophy of Plato's dialogues, with invited guests discussing selected topics and applying the timeless philosophical principles to contemporary issues and circumstances.We welcome your thoughts and suggestions for discussion topics, and please contact us if you or someone you know would be interested in being a guest on the podcast. We can be reached by e-mail to dialoguesonplato@outlook.com. Episodes are lightly edited for clarity, with care to avoid compromising the contributions made by participants. Wherever our discussions take us, we gain knowledge from each others perspectives and Plato, without a doubt, would have imagined no better way than in dialogue for knowledge which is the account of the reasons why to find its home. Language: en Genres: Mathematics, Philosophy, Science, Society & Culture Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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Alfred North Whitehead, Part 2: The Mathematician Who Added Plato to Modern Science
Episode 10
Sunday, 12 April, 2026
In their second episode featuring the works of modern Platonist Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), James Myers and Michael Fitzpatrick brought Plato into the 21st century through Whitehead’s perspectives as a mathematician and philosopher. The discussion relates Whitehead’s perspectives to many of Plato’s dialogues, including The Sophist, The Timaeus, The Republic, The Parmenides, and The Philebus.Writing his landmark work Process and Reality during the years when quantum mechanics and general relativity were discovered, Whitehead’s philosophy of organism treats the universe as a web of interconnected processes and changes. Whitehead applied the logic of Plato’s writing from 2,400 years ago to identify crucial connections in the web and, by following their paths, he related concepts in general relativity and quantum mechanics to the universe as an organism. From Whitehead’s perspective, there was clear logic for an eternal co-dependency of the infinite universe and the finite connections within its web.The mathematician had much to say about the nature of time, which was a prominent in the episode’s discussion. To Whitehead, time was not linear but circular, and likewise Plato’s character Timaeus described the universe as spherical. Timaeus also stated that the changes we see everywhere around us are in a “moving image of eternity, moving according to number, of eternity remaining in unity.” The appeal of Timaeus’ perspective to a mathematician becomes even more obvious in the character’s next statement: “This number, of course, is what we now call 'time'.”Can science and philosophy be reunited? If ever there was a time for such unity, the time is now, and Whitehead paved the way to connecting ancient principles with the discoveries of Albert Einstein and Nils Bohr that have transformed the modern world.
