symmetry and beauty in plato对称性在柏拉图和美丽.pdfVIP

Symmetry 2010, 2, 455-465; doi:10.3390/sym2020455 OPEN ACCESS symmetry ISSN 2073-8994 /journal/symmetry Article Symmetry and Beauty in Plato David R. Lloyd School of Chemistry, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland; E-Mail: boblloyd@ Received: 22 February 2010; in revised form: 16 March 2010 / Accepted: 20 March 2010 / Published: 25 March 2010 Abstract: Plato writes about Beauty in many of his dialogues, particularly in the Symposium, but he has no word equivalent to our Symmetry, and this concept was not then formalised. Nevertheless, there are indications that some aspects of the concept were understood, if only intuitively. Plato has a very abstract concept of beauty, and when he uses beauty to characterise the so-called Platonic Solids in the Timaeus, he seems to be emphasising at least their regularity. It can be argued that the way in which he specifies the detailed construction of the solids is remarkably close to a modern description in terms of (point) symmetry. For Plato, something of our symmetry is included in what he means by beauty, and the long mathematical approach to symmetry starts with the Timaeus. Keywords: history; symmetry; proportion; Plato; Timaeus; elements 1. Introduction Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare wrote Edna St. Vincent Millay, twice in one stanza [1]. It is not clear what led her to this idea, and it would be rather difficult to check. It can hardly have been the beauty of Euclids Greek, which has