![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxUTrzqSzn795fawinkBzD7RKhcdteghs3J7UJG3pW3KGawHLhtzmQGaFi9ACXS7pjCBmulexiSxsW0c7rbTxhluzxrJbDiXxz_LsjEY7vHHzm8j82ORLEWiGMC0s3rdYT0Fz5/s320/Shower+Drain002.jpg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGnUFGCR0NBgLYfR7NVatQfHfjFdjA-vm6WDo1UnwCTiTtT_gDph1EyZdANyteVGvNvvUz_wJUJZy5UYaxB0YiMhWSytNjX23mou6sAKbLq1HNF2p3Dj-rNbjnZYzy_C2O4XUK/s320/shower-drain-23140048495.jpg)
(Does this diagram show a circle tilted back, or an ellipse?
Joseph Brooks, socrates.berkeley.edu/ ~plab/earlygroup/shape.htm)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinawqVRLDirnBAOuDhe0BXrXAImYKxZFyHlJE7eJREj65WdJOeJoDFF5CadJyJcVRa91oWwbQeycGw_PfMoDD_40p1oZ92Kxqn9B1WJXEXvsfABpEmSUwN48fi_DB_us7bxmFj/s320/commonFateDepth.gif)
Except maybe Plato.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2HYfAXZZ2v4fEjd7NrWwmhixqq3N8Cnv0npwihtI9UmlqpxDUPN0IfMXIAPOgS3i8l4Wf6lY5kGPlbVu8-vEH74NTUaOsLBRrlCJ6KkvYDzAYr78wtZFw6Yk22MsJyvmpz8RY/s320/plato.jpg)
By contrast, the perfect mental forms do not change. Plato called these the “essences” of things. The essence of something is what it truly is, its core nature, despite appearances. So my shower drain is truly circular in shape, despite appearances to the contrary.
But why assume something to which evidence speaks the contrary? The evidence is that the drain is not, in fact, circular. But Plato reasoned that if essences are perfect and eternal, and every object has an essence as its core, then every object must be perfect and eternal in its innermost nature. If our actual experience of the world contradicts that, well, so much the worse for experience. The experience is wrong.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjchTRhqLnzt6dCNO57yhaK1nE6WIEdY1YNPG0penCMzc_UxWNXaSf8PdaqTeEc1ufTGGjauZhPdkrz726A-i2vzcn2jPf5gSpRW7vJ1VJqHfi20lttCZpbvOd7dgCmcN0eHt-q/s320/Perfect+form.jpg)
That’s a large pill to swallow. It is tantamount to the favorite argument of parents, “Because I said so!”
It is not necessary to assume that the perfect essence of an object resides in the object. Why can’t we say that essences reside in the mind, as inductive abstractions and deductive proofs? If that were allowed, then we would not be troubled by the fact that perception and measurement are inherently unreliable and that all objects are changeable. We could simply mentally accommodate for the error variance to infer the correct reality.
But Plato seemed blind to subjectivity, especially his own. Everything in his theory was “out there,” separate from the human mind, because he did not explicitly take the mind into consideration in his theory of reality. The best he could do was to say that the perfect and eternal essences lived in a special world, the spaceless and timeless World of Forms. The Forms were “out there” somewhere, although they would have to be in heaven to be in a spaceless and timeless domain.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5akks3P0SkZ3ZaEGO7Cq7BlqUD3xJj0WmZ9dJeSyCncLKrxXW64uuManUvkqLnA6fQvAtt5xC0mJgMII8ftT4bOFncuma747ljIBRofU1LQEhGB6uqBVA1TFIEOyvwY_pGoSh/s320/dodecahedron.jpg)
So circles are in heaven. When you imagine you have seen a circle, you have actually glimpsed heaven. The same is true for a square, a triangle, or a dodecahedron.
In fact, we would have to say, keeping with Plato, that heaven is all you ever see. Everything has a shape, and a size, and so forth, because perceived things must have form. But when you apprehend and conceptualize a thing’s form, you are actually dealing with its Form, or essence, and Forms exist only in heaven. Therefore we have never, and cannot ever, perceive any part of the actual world, only the world of Forms.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5URNyw05JCcHN7l_gj-u3ugMTxm8E8Pkc0YHWpvXj8HZ0Q3D_RZCgNwETizSx-_EAyIHObGc7JxVj-Gh2k-JxwELmj-NSMOQ_PZEPWy028_gh8XwLeZ3gWqhoGxzxnJb_L3JP/s320/Paper_Cup.jpg)
Plato’s is a profoundly antiscientific theory. Science is the observation and measurement of the actual world, not description of some theoretical heavenly world beyond space and time. So you would think scientists would be keen to avoid missteps leading to Platonist thinking. Yet they actually make the same mistake Plato made, assuming that everything is “out there,” nothing is “in here.”
In other words, scientists today are just as blind to their own subjectivity as Plato was to his. Scientific hyperobjectivity leads to the same reification errors that characterize Plato’s implausible theory of heavenly Forms.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNoAYcJRd1KrG7W_LttguUsgbVXeJwHXPcebOhVC6uru4IpBNMIY9yJPyu9h8HeHElgVgKTaBR4H3qEoO30kvidEWA6DAtDi9P95-bHhvMBjHhgSh47JdUSix1tUolsvA_FHl0/s320/Face+on+Moon.jpg)
Likewise, most scientists insist that there is objective “information” in the world and even “knowledge” independent of any knower. Many believe that numbers exist independently of the human mind, and so do space, time, energy, mass, and force. Theoretical physicists are convinced they are close to having a “theory of everything,” by which they mean everything in the objective world, which is the only world, in their thinking. Such hubris would be risible were it not pervasive.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLiSfMtNmmfB7JIbhHeKDWf7uqh0wxJtPzyGdckVHgK_OtC5jepDs7zgwIHxrdu1-BBtLOv9INySEgNgYifRAcgQ1gAG9wcpJeuwiUhiYHHWXTnI9QGtc00GbETqUIh1HCP3W6/s320/Bosch+detail.jpg)
What is the alternative? Abandonment of science and return to the prescientific darkness of ignorance and superstition? Hardly. All we need are a few tweaks to the philosophy of science to allow that subjectivity exists in the world as a natural fact and can be studied without shame.