The Socratic Method.....and Plato's Ideas, is Replaced by Google?

http://youtu.be/dk60sYrU2RU

The idea that truth is timeless and resides outside the universe was the essence of Plato's philosophy, exemplified in the parable of the slave boy that was meant to argue that discovery is merely remembering. Lee Smolin

 Bold added for me for emphasis....as well as saying that this philosophy is not "outside of time."

Our attempt to justify our beliefs logically by giving reasons results in the "regress of reasons." Since any reason can be further challenged, the regress of reasons threatens to be an infinite regress. However, since this is impossible, there must be reasons for which there do not need to be further reasons: reasons which do not need to be proven. By definition, these are "first principles." The "Problem of First Principles" arises when we ask Why such reasons would not need to be proven. Aristotle's answer was that first principles do not need to be proven because they are self-evident, i.e. they are known to be true simply by understanding them.

Yes no doubt. But as you look through the experiment present by Youtube something very important is realized that as a "data base" and Google's connection to it,  allow an excursion for children that we would want applied to "all thinking beings"  as  a vast resource made available to them, having considered the Grandmothers as part of the cloud of encouragement toward progressing and developing. Teachers can come in many forms?

So yes I see education in this way as well...but imagine if such a data base is taken away......imagine being devoid of the technology?

You want to see the children apply such a tool .....being devoid of the technology as to a method inherent in their own design and makeup which will grant them the same benefits as you would have,  having gone through such an experiment?

What did they learn that was algorithmic pleasing that Arthur C Clarke might embrace as to all teachers? Replace teachers with Grandmother Cloud?

These things are being considered now in the future development of education as I have research it.....but there is something deeper that must be transmitted that can only be done with the interaction of the teachers....while still accessing that data, you still need the teachers there.

Imagine a "gogle search feature" as the very last "self evident question." This is internal and not attached to the keyboard computerized developer algorithmic code,  but is a feature of the human being searching, looking for answers, and becoming their own teachers as well as students. This the independence you want transmitted to children from teachers, as well as too,  adults in my view. The teacher, and student are one.

You of course recognize the grounding factor...all I am saying is this inductive /deductive process is part of the need for individuals to excel, regardless of that technology.

***

Logic is the art of thinking; grammar, the art of inventing symbols and combining them to express thought; and rhetoric, the art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation of language to circumstance.Sister Miriam Joseph

 Painting by Cesare Maccari (1840-1919), Cicero Denounces Catiline.

In medieval universities, the trivium comprised the three subjects taught first: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The word is a Latin term meaning “the three ways” or “the three roads” forming the foundation of a medieval liberal arts education. This study was preparatory for the quadrivium. The trivium is implicit in the De nuptiis of Martianus Capella, although the term was not used until the Carolingian era when it was coined in imitation of the earlier quadrivium.^[1] It was later systematized in part by Petrus Ramus as an essential part of Ramism.

***

The quadrivium comprised the four subjects, or arts, taught in medieval universities after the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning "the four ways" or "the four roads". Together, the trivium and the quadrivium comprised the seven liberal arts.^[1] The quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These followed the preparatory work of the trivium made up of grammar, logic (or dialectic, as it was called at the times), and rhetoric. In turn, the quadrivium was considered preparatory work for the serious study of philosophy and theology.

***

The Pyramid(as an expression of Liberal Arts Encapsulated) is a combination of  the Trivium , and  the Quadrivium

If you internalize this pyramidal structure then you realize what Plato was talking about in terms of "the idea" and how it can arrive at the peak. This is of course after giving education a  sincere scrutiny with all the tools applicable to what can become self evident? The "google search feature,"  is your connection to "vast potentials" and is accessible to all who are creative and endeavor to learn to understand the search for truth.

Liberal arts

The Pyramid(as an expression of Liberal Arts Encapsulated) is a combination of  the Trivium , and  the Quadrivium

My interest has been from a historical position about how such a system while it developed from that ancient perspective,  is still not about a "religious perspective" as to what is to be believed by Lee Smolin.

If we think outside of time, we believe these ideas somehow "existed" before we invented them. If we think in time we see no reason to presume that.Lee Smolin

I of course question what is relative by appointments from him as to what can  exist "within and out of time." Since this is a foundation approach with which his whole take depends on, his relative relationships as it is relegated toward perspective about the beginning and the end of the universe,  is a position with which one cannot ever assume, hence, the value in religious perspective one is suppose to have in relation to their science? I hope I get this right.

The idea that truth is timeless and resides outside the universe was the essence of Plato's philosophy, exemplified in the parable of the slave boy that was meant to argue that discovery is merely remembering. Lee Smolin

So I needed to put this in perspective, so it is understood that the issue here arises "from within" so that all expression without,  inside or outside of time become a relative issue about position and stances assumed and cannot be differentiated to such categories as to it significance as being religious.

Among contemporary cosmologists and physicists, proponents of eternal inflation and timeless quantum cosmology are thinking outside of time. Proponents of evolutionary and cyclic cosmological scenarios are thinking in time. If you think in time you worry about time ending at space-time singularities. If you think outside of time this is an ignorable problem because you believe reality is the whole history of the world at once. Lee Smolin

So, I provided some access to "Plato's Dialogues" so as to give you the the ability to discern what is assume by Lee is what is spoken by and through Plato's own words.

What did you gain by reading that you can now say that what is established as "foundations approached" to being realistic, wafts through the scientific community and distinguishes itself according to some category that allows you to believe that it is religious by inherent and that such searches have no basis according too?

Does he say that explicit....only you can say by such association and quotes, can I say then that I point toward that direction in my assumptions as well. I mean you have been given the opportunity so you decide.

My perspective is about that "Cognitive Tool Kit" and how leading to a "point source" is nothing more then the recognition of coming to a "point source" inside you,  that is inside time. What I am saying, is that such perfection is the containment of all that has ever existed, or will ever exist, you are connected to in time, so these thoughts about the before and after are not apart from what happens within in any universe, nor can birth and death be considered outside of it.

This recognition is "the measure of" with which one can assume their foundation. That is, how I see Lee's position. All scientist would agree in that such measure is appropriate, yet such thoughts about time and outside of time pertaining to the Cognitive Tool Kit is not part and parcel of a "religious context" that one could say, "eureka!"

Again, it leads to a Point Source. A "point source" inside time that contain vasts potential?

SEE:

• Meno
• Plato's Problem
• Plato's Problem and Meno: How Accurately Portrayed...

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The seven liberal arts – Picture from the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad von Landsberg (12th century)

The term liberal arts denotes a curriculum that imparts general knowledge and develops the student’s rational thought and intellectual capabilities, unlike the professional, vocational and technical curricula emphasizing specialization. The contemporary liberal arts comprise studying literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, and science.^[1]

Contents 1 History 2 Liberal arts in the United States 3 See also 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links

History

In classical antiquity, the liberal arts denoted the education worthy of a free person (Latin: liber, “free”).^[2] Contrary to popular opinion, freeborn girls were as likely to receive formal education as boys, especially during the Roman Empire—unlike the lack-of-education, or purely manual/technical skills, proper to a slave.^[3] The "liberal arts" or "liberal pursuits" (Latin liberalia studia) were already so called in formal education during the Roman Empire; for example, Seneca the Younger discusses liberal arts in education from a critical Stoic point of view in Moral Epistle 88.^[4] The subjects that would become the standard "Liberal Arts" in Roman and Medieval times already comprised the basic curriculum in the enkuklios paideia or "education in a circle" of late Classical and Hellenistic Greece.

In the 5th century AD, Martianus Capella defined the seven Liberal Arts as: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. In the medieval Western university, the seven liberal arts were:^[5]

• the Trivium

1. grammar
2. logic
3. rhetoric

• the Quadrivium

4. arithmetic
5. astronomy
6. music
7. geometry

 Liberal arts in the United States

Main article: Liberal arts college

Further information: Liberal arts colleges in the United States and Great Books Program

In the United States, Liberal arts colleges are schools emphasizing undergraduate study in the liberal arts. Traditionally earned over four years of full-time study, the student earned either a Bachelor of Arts degree or a Bachelor of Science degree; on completing undergraduate study, students might progress to either a graduate school or a professional school (public administration, business, law, medicine, theology). The teaching is Socratic,^{[citation needed]} to small classes,^{[citation needed]} and at a greater teacher-to-student ratio than at universities;^{[citation needed]} professors teaching classes are allowed to concentrate more on their teaching responsibilities than primary research professors or graduate student teaching assistants, in contrast to the instruction common in universities.^{[original research?][dubious – discuss]} Despite the European origin of the liberal arts college,^[6] the term liberal arts college usually denotes liberal arts colleges in the United States.

See also

• Bachelor of Arts
• Bachelor of General Studies
• Bachelor of Liberal Arts
• Bachelor of Liberal Studies
• Doctor of Liberal Studies
• Great Books Program
• Great Books Programs in Canada
• Liberal arts college
• Master of Liberal Studies
• The Mechanical Arts

 References

1. ^ "Liberal Arts: Encyclopedia Britannica Concise". Encyclopedia Britannica.
2. ^ Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages [1948], trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 37. The classical sources include Cicero, De Oratore, I.72–73, III.127, and De re publica, I.30.
3. ^ H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity [1948], trans. George Lamb (London: Sheed & Ward, 1956), pp. 266–67.
4. ^ Seneca Epistle 88 at Stoics.com
5. ^ "James Burke: The Day the Universe Changed In the Light Of the Above".
6. ^ Harriman, Philip (1935). "Antecedents of the Liberal Arts College". The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1935), pp. 63–71.

 Further reading

• Blaich, Charles, Anne Bost, Ed Chan, and Richard Lynch. "Defining Liberal Arts Education." Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, 2004.
• Blanshard, Brand. The Uses of a Liberal Education: And Other Talks to Students. (Open Court, 1973. ISBN 0-8126-9429-5)
• Friedlander, Jack. Measuring the Benefits of Liberal Arts Education in Washington's Community Colleges. Los Angeles: Center for the Study of Community Colleges, 1982a. (ED 217 918)
• Joseph, Sister Miriam. The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric. Paul Dry Books Inc, 2002.
• Pfnister, Allen O. "The Role of the Liberal Arts College." The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 55, No. 2 (March/April 1984): 145–170.
• Reeves, Floyd W. "The Liberal-Arts College." The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 1, No. 7 (1930): 373–380.
• Seidel, George. "Saving the Small College." The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 39, No. 6 (1968): 339–342.
• Winterer, Caroline.The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780–1910. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
• Wriston, Henry M. The Nature of a Liberal College. Lawrence University Press, 1937.
• T. Kaori Kitao, William R. Kenan, Jr. (27 March 1999). The Usefulness Of Uselessness. Keynote Address, The 1999 Institute for the Academic Advancement of Youth's Odyssey at Swarthmore College.

 External links

• The Annapolis Group/College News
• The Classical Liberal Arts Academy
• Philosophy of Liberal Education
• Liberal Arts at the Community College
• A Descriptive Analysis of the Community College Liberal Arts Curriculum
• The Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts
• Academic Commons
• CatholiCity: Catholic Encyclopedia
• What are the liberal arts? at liberalartsadvantage.com
•  "Arts, Liberal". New International Encyclopedia. 1905.

Quadrivium

The quadrivium comprised the four subjects, or arts, taught in medieval universities after the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning "the four ways" or "the four roads". Together, the trivium and the quadrivium comprised the seven liberal arts.^[1] The quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These followed the preparatory work of the trivium made up of grammar, logic (or dialectic, as it was called at the times), and rhetoric. In turn, the quadrivium was considered preparatory work for the serious study of philosophy and theology.

Contents 1 Origins 2 Medieval usage 3 Modern usage 4 See also 5 References

Origins

These four studies compose the secondary part of the curriculum outlined by Plato in The Republic, and are described in the seventh book of that work.^[1] The quadrivium is implicit in early Pythagorean writings and in the De nuptiis of Martianus Capella, although the term was not used until Boethius early in the sixth century.^[2] As Proclus wrote:

The Pythagoreans considered all mathematical science to be divided into four parts: one half they marked off as concerned with quantity, the other half with magnitude; and each of these they posited as twofold. A quantity can be considered in regard to its character by itself or in its relation to another quantity, magnitudes as either stationary or in motion. Arithmetic, then, studies quantities as such, music the relations between quantities, geometry magnitude at rest, spherics [astronomy] magnitude inherently moving^[3].

Medieval usage

At many medieval universities, this would have been the course leading to the degree of Master of Arts (after the BA). After the MA the student could enter for Bachelor's degrees of the higher faculties (Theology, Medicine or Law). To this day some of the postgraduate degree courses lead to the degree of Bachelor (the B.Phil and B.Litt. degrees are examples in the field of philosophy, and the B.Mus. remains a postgraduate qualification at Oxford and Cambridge universities).

The study was eidetic, approaching the philosophical objectives sought by considering it from each aspect of the quadrivium within the general structure demonstrated by Proclus, namely arithmetic and music on the one hand,^[4] and geometry and cosmology on the other.^[5]

The subject of music within the quadrivium was originally the classical subject of harmonics, in particular the study of the proportions between the music intervals created by the division of a monochord. A relationship to music as actually practised was not part of this study, but the framework of classical harmonics would substantially influence the content and structure of music theory as practised both in European and Islamic cultures.

Modern usage

In modern applications of the liberal arts as curriculum in colleges or universities, the quadrivium may be considered as the study of number and its relationship to physical space or time: arithmetic was pure number, geometry was number in space, music number in time, and astronomy number in space and time. Morris Kline classifies the four elements of the quadrivium as pure (arithmetic), stationary (geometry), moving (astronomy) and applied (music) number.^[6]

This schema is sometimes referred to as "classical education" but it is more accurately a development of the 12th and 13th centuries with recovered classical elements, rather than an organic growth from the educational systems of antiquity. The term continues to be used by the classical education movement.

See also

• Andreas Capellanus
• The Classical education movement
• Degrees of the University of Oxford

 References

1. ^ ^{a b}  "Quadrivium". New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
2. ^ Henri Irénée Marrou, "Les Arts Libéreaux dans l'Antiquité Classique", pp. 6-27 in Arts Libéraux et Philosophie au Moyen Âge, (Paris: Vrin / Montréal: Institut d'Études Médiévales), 1969, pp. 18-19.
3. ^ Proclus, A commentary on the first book of Euclid's Elements, xii, trans. Glenn Raymond Morrow (Princeton: Princeton University Press) 1992, pp. 29-30. ISBN 0691020906.
4. ^ Craig Wright, The Maze and the Warrior - Symbols in Architecture, Theology, and Music, Harvard University Press 2001
5. ^ Laura Ackerman Smoller, History, Prophecy and the Stars: Christian Astrology of Pierre D'Ailly, 1350-1420, Princeton University Press 1994
6. ^ Morris Kline, "The Sine of G Major", Mathematics in Western Culture, Oxford University Press 1953

Trivium:Three Roads

 

Logic is the art of thinking; grammar, the art of inventing symbols and combining them to express thought; and rhetoric, the art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation of language to circumstance.Sister Miriam Joseph

 Painting by Cesare Maccari (1840-1919), Cicero Denounces Catiline.

In medieval universities, the trivium comprised the three subjects taught first: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The word is a Latin term meaning “the three ways” or “the three roads” forming the foundation of a medieval liberal arts education. This study was preparatory for the quadrivium. The trivium is implicit in the De nuptiis of Martianus Capella, although the term was not used until the Carolingian era when it was coined in imitation of the earlier quadrivium.^[1] It was later systematized in part by Petrus Ramus as an essential part of Ramism.

Formal grammar

A formal grammar (sometimes simply called a grammar) is a set of rules of a specific kind, for forming strings in a formal language. The rules describe how to form strings from the language's alphabet that are valid according to the language's syntax. A grammar does not describe the meaning of the strings or what can be done with them in whatever context —only their form.

Formal language theory, the discipline which studies formal grammars and languages, is a branch of applied mathematics. Its applications are found in theoretical computer science, theoretical linguistics, formal semantics, mathematical logic, and other areas.

A formal grammar is a set of rules for rewriting strings, along with a "start symbol" from which rewriting must start. Therefore, a grammar is usually thought of as a language generator. However, it can also sometimes be used as the basis for a "recognizer"—a function in computing that determines whether a given string belongs to the language or is grammatically incorrect. To describe such recognizers, formal language theory uses separate formalisms, known as automata theory. One of the interesting results of automata theory is that it is not possible to design a recognizer for certain formal languages.

Parsing is the process of recognizing an utterance (a string in natural languages) by breaking it down to a set of symbols and analyzing each one against the grammar of the language. Most languages have the meanings of their utterances structured according to their syntax—a practice known as compositional semantics. As a result, the first step to describing the meaning of an utterance in language is to break it down part by part and look at its analyzed form (known as its parse tree in computer science, and as its deep structure in generative grammar).

Logic

As a discipline, logic dates back to Aristotle, who established its fundamental place in philosophy. The study of logic is part of the classical trivium.

Averroes defined logic as "the tool for distinguishing between the true and the false"^[4]; Richard Whately, '"the Science, as well as the Art, of reasoning"; and Frege, "the science of the most general laws of truth". The article Definitions of logic provides citations for these and other definitions.

Logic is often divided into two parts, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. The first is drawing general conclusions from specific examples, the second drawing logical conclusions from definitions and axioms. A similar dichotomy, used by Aristotle, is analysis and synthesis. Here the first takes an object of study and examines its component parts, the second considers how parts can be combined to form a whole.
Logic is also studied in argumentation theory.^[5]

Rising Above the Duality

The Tao of heaven is to take from those who have too much and give to those who do not have enough. Man’s way is different. He takes from those who do not have enough to give to those who already have too much. (verse 77. Tr. Gia Fu Feng)

Gia-Fu Feng (1919 - 1985) was prominent as both an English translator (with his wife, Jane English) of Daoist classics and a Daoist teacher in the United States, associated with Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, The Beats and Abraham Maslow.

He was born in Shanghai in 1919 into a fairly wealthy family of some influence. His father was a prominent banker, one of the founders of the Bank of China; his mother died when he was 16. He was educated privately in his own home in the classics of the Chinese tradition and in private boarding schools. He was for several months tutored by the wife of the British Consul-General. His family members were Buddhist. For the springtime holiday, they travelled to the ancestral tombs in Yu Yao, in Chekiang Province, for the spring festivals. During the Japanese Occupation, Gia-Fu went to Kunming in Free China to complete his Bachelor's Degree at Southwest Associated University in the liberal arts. Gia-Fu once commented that he had become a millionaire three times in his life, giving his money away each time. The first time was when he worked for the bank in Kunming.

Xiuzhen TuThis is the Yin-yang symbol or Taijitu (太極圖), with black representing yin and white representing yang. It is a symbol that reflects the inescapably intertwined duality of all things in nature, a common theme in Taoism. No quality is independent of its opposite, nor so pure that it does not contain its opposite in a diminished form: these concepts are depicted by the vague division between black and white, the flowing boundary between the two, and the smaller circles within the large regions.

Secret of the Golden Flower

Chinese Taoists believe this bright image has close relation to the "Original Essence", "Golden Flower", and "Original Light" . If the practitioner sees the Mandala, that means he/she see part of "Original Essence", and he/she are entering the beginning level of the immortal essence. In the book of Wilhelm's translation, he describes some of the pictures of the Mandala.

Some might know of my references to the Mandala throughout this blog and more specific the understanding of what the "Pure land" means. If you had never known of what the Koan symbolizes then how would you know to understand that the communication of that "very essence of quality" is transmutable to another human being in it's most pure from?

The Golden Flower is the Elixir of Life (literally, golden ball, golden pill). All changes of spiritual consciousness depend upon the Heart. Here is a secret charm, which, although it works very accurately, is yet so fluent that it needs extreme intelligence and clarity, and complete absorption and calm. People without this highest degree of intelligence and understanding do not find the way to apply the charm; People without this utmost capacity for concentration and calm cannot keep fast hold of it.

***

This is a photograph of author and philosopher Robert M. Pirsigtaken by Ian Glendinning on the eve of the Liverpool conference of 7th July 2005.

What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part 1 Chapter 1.(Bold added by me for emphasis)

This article is more about what Robert Maynard Pirsig accomplished. What I had learnt as I came to realize what the value of thought I had taken from the reading. I had already read a lot over the years, and it was that reading that brought it together for me, so that now I can describe what I feel needs to be done.

The title of this post is specific in that the Tao here is the realization that we can constantly move in this relation. Is still to remain part of the earthly state of existence, as the "square" shows in my model of thinking.

Here in this mandala it is interesting to see how such a construction of the diagram becomes focused. Foursquare. If you look at the pyramid and us being over top of, then we can keep this in mind. The Seal of Solomon or Star of David is a symbolism of a kind that warrants the mind to think of involution and evolution. The central location is the place of the heart. Those six smaller triangles then become what?:)

Central to this evolution of the thinking, and the rising above this duality, is to recognize "the Heart" in this relation. It is the idea of the quality that must come into one's thinking to see that what transpires after the distinction of such dualism is to become part of the quality of the new thinking mind. Then the thinking mind has been raised in a "energy configuration" that holds all thoughts to a transforming hierarchy within the pyramid, as a colour of gravity depiction and ascension, as possible in each and every person.

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego consciousness extends.... All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral. Carl Jung

The very image at the bottom of this blog page again is a type of koan that was given to me "in literal form" to come to understand it's message. I pass it onto others so that they might consider it's message. It is about life, and about the transformation to a spiritual person. This is a necessary recognition of when we choose to "rise above that dualism" to become situated in the heart mind.

This is also the time when we take the earthly design, and move over top of the pyramid, to see that what lays before us is a recognition of the cyclical nature that dualism enfolds into the living of, as a human being. One needs the heart in order to rise to the higher principals of the intellect, taking that energy and transforming it into new thought processes. So then the pyramid then becomes a dynamical model of the human body and mind.

To ever get the sense of this momentum of opposites transforming into the one other is to realize that a pressure exists on the forearm. IN this contact a oppositional force will cause the realization that if you were empty, no resistance, to allow that opposing movement to move forward. You allow it to become centrifugal, as if, in a rotation, to return the force back onto itself.

Such momentums are the things which propel my own mind through the vast journeys of space on a imaginary spaceship, that while in the Lagrangian mode, one can understand how such rockets can travel with the least amount of energy expedited.

Such an exchange is the idea then that the economy in caught in this kind of action of dualism?

***

See:

Distortions of Reality

Ancient Notion of "Matter Four Squared" Called Earth

Orators Reduced to Written Words

Oh Dear!... How Technology has Changed Things