Description
Book SynopsisThe much-anticipated anthology on Plato’s Timaeus—Plato’s singular dialogue on the creation of the universe, the nature of the physical world, and the place of persons in the cosmos—examining all dimensions of one of the most important books in Western Civilization: its philosophy, cosmology, science, and ethics, its literary aspects and reception. Contributions come from leading scholars in their respective fields, including Sir Anthony Leggett, 2003 Nobel Laureate for Physics. Parts of or earlier versions of these papers were first presented at the Timaeus Conference, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in September of 2007.
To this day, Plato’s Timaeus grounds the form of ethical and political thinking called Natural Law—the view that there are norms in nature that provide the patterns for our actions and ground the objectivity of human values. Beyond the intellectual content of the dialogue’s core, its literary frame is also the source of the myth of Atlantis, giving the West the concept of the “lost world.”
From Platonic space to Presocratic vortices, from Philosopher-Kings to Craftsman-Gods and from modern physics to the myth of Atlantis,
One Book, The Whole Universe presents in one volume the most up-to-date and penetrating scholarship on Plato’s Timaeus by some of the greatest minds alive today.
Trade ReviewOne Book, The Whole Universe is remarkably thorough in the treatment of its chosen text (a thesis that can be confirmed by the index locorum) and contains precisely the sort of articles that one would want and expect in a scholarly collection on the Timaeus. There is scarcely a Timaean topic of traditional interest to scholars that is not mentioned or even given a detailed explanation"". -
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
