00: "In the sacred grove of Academus"
Let's being with Plato. If we are to build our scientific journalism on solid ground, let's begin with the beginning of natural philosophy. Perhaps the closest to that are the ancient Greeks, chief among them Plato. We started reading the introduction of Plato Complete Works edited with notes by John M. Cooper in 1997. Plato's dialogues were written nearly twenty-four hundred years ago, have been widely consumed since, and form the basis of Greek philosophy. Greek philosophy survived competition with Christianity and other "eastern" philosophies and wisdoms, and has held a central place in European culture. Plato was a native Athenian believed to have been born in 427 B.C. and died in 347 B.C. at the age of eighty-one. He was a member of old and distinguished aristocratic families through both his mother and father. Around his late teens to early twenties, Plato began frequenting the ...