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Plato argued that the things we see are imperfect copies of perfect, unchanging 'Forms'. Any circle you draw is slightly flawed, yet you can think of a perfect circle; for Plato, that perfect Form was more real than anything in the physical world.

Philosophy

Philosophy

The story behind the card

Plato set out the theory in dialogues such as the Phaedo and the Republic, written in Athens in the fourth century BC, usually through the voice of his teacher Socrates. His Greek words for the Forms, idea and eidos, both come from seeing and mean 'form' or 'look'; English 'idea' descends from them. The Forms, such as beauty, justice or the perfect circle, can be grasped only by reason, not by the senses. In the Republic's Allegory of the Cave, prisoners who have only ever seen shadows on a wall take them for reality, much as we do with the physical world. Plato's own student Aristotle rejected separate Forms, arguing that form exists only in real things. The debate lives on: many mathematicians, Kurt Gödel among them, have held that numbers exist independently of us.

Türkçe oku
Platon'a göre gördüğün her şey, kusursuz ve değişmez “idea”ların kusurlu birer kopyasıdır. Çizdiğin her daire biraz kusurludur, ama yine de kusursuz bir daireyi düşünebilirsin. Platon için bu kusursuz idea, fiziksel dünyadaki her şeyden daha gerçekti.

Platon bu kuramı, MÖ 4. yüzyılda Atina'da yazdığı Phaidon ve Devlet gibi diyaloglarda, çoğunlukla hocası Sokrates'in ağzından anlatır. Kullandığı Yunanca idea ve eidos sözcükleri “görmek” fiiliyle akrabadır ve “biçim, görünüş” anlamına gelir; Batı dillerindeki “idea” ve Türkçedeki “ideal” de bu kökten gelir. Güzellik, adalet ya da kusursuz daire gibi idealar duyularla değil, ancak akılla kavranabilir. Devlet'teki mağara benzetmesinde, ömürleri boyunca yalnızca duvara düşen gölgeleri görmüş tutsaklar bu gölgeleri gerçeğin kendisi sanır; Platon'a göre biz de fiziksel dünyaya böyle bakarız. Platon'un öğrencisi Aristoteles ayrı bir idealar dünyası fikrini reddetti; ona göre biçim ancak var olan şeylerin içinde bulunur. Tartışma bugün de sürüyor: Kurt Gödel başta olmak üzere pek çok matematikçi, sayıların bizden bağımsız olarak var olduğunu savunmuştur.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Theory of forms
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