A researcher at the University of Manchester has discovered a pattern of symbols embedded in ancient Greek philosopher Plato‘s writings which give them a musical structure. According to Dr. Jay Kennedy, a researcher at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine who has been studying Plato’s work for five years, this code reveals his “hidden philosophy.”
“The result was amazing,” he said, “It was like opening a tomb and finding new set of gospels written by Jesus Christ himself.”
Another Dan Brown book in the making? Perhaps, but more importantly, what implications do these findings have for our conception of Western history, and the age old conflict between science and religion?
Reportedly, this so-called Plato Code suggests that the philosopher anticipated the Scientific Revolution 2,000 years before Isaac Newton, in that he posited the awe-inspiring force of nature was mathematically dictated. Thus according to Plato, to understand the scientific basis of nature was to move closer to God.
The musical pattern of symbols were derived from ancient Pythagorean disciples, a literary expression of the planets and stars’ inaudible music, what Pythagoras had called “harmony of the spheres” a century earlier.
According to an article from the University of Manchester site, Kennedy discovered that in Plato’s work The Republic, a group of words related to music appeared after every twelfth of the text, a hidden arrangement representing the twelve notes of a Greek musical scale. Some “notes” were harmonic, others dissonant. Harmonic notes were “sounds associated with love or laughter,” while dissonant notes were “marked with screeching sounds or war or death.”
Whereas other modern scholars have dismissed ancient claims about Plato’s encoded writing, Kennedy has proven otherwise, saying: “This is the beginning of something big. It will take a generation to work out the implications. All 2,000 pages contain undetected symbols.”
It looks like Newton was far from first. Today, a study also revealed that Renaissance painter Michelangelo hid an image of a brainstem in his Sistine Chapel representation of God.
(via Digg via TechVert; title image via Cultural Cocktail Hour)
Published: Jun 28, 2010 04:15 pm