In several of Plato’s later works, he suggests the existence of the Forms is not enough to account for the world as we know it. We need also some sort of cause or causal agency to produce objects that embody the Forms. Only so can the world and everything in it be seen as the product of rational design and not blind chance or necessity.[1] But how can that be?
In his late dialogue Timaeus, Plato brings in the philosopher Timaeus of Locri (a Greek city-state in southern Italy) to expound on the philosopher of nature to a small group that includes Socrates. Socrates reports that they have the previous day been discussing politics, including many of the ideas found in the Republic.[2] At this point Critias offers the sketch of a story of a prehistoric island, Atlantis, whose inhabitants dominated much of the Mediterranean and threatened Athens. The delivery of his speech is postponed until after Timaeus speaks, and provides the content of the companion dialogue Critias.[3]
Timaeus begins by making a distinction between what always exists and does not change, and what comes-to-be and never is. This distinction is familiar from Plato’s Republic and other writings in which the changeless Forms are contrasted with the changeable objects of the sensible world. The timeless entities are grasped by understanding (noēsis), the changeable objects by opinion (doxa)—a distinction in the theory of knowledge familiar from the Republic and elsewhere. Now anything that comes to be must arise from the agency of a cause, which he identifies (without argument) as the Craftsman (dēmiourgos), or, as we might call him, the Designer, Creator, or Architect of the world. Timaeus tells us that, like a craftsman, he looks to a prototype to craft his creation so that it will be a beautiful product.[4]
Now consider the universe (ouranos, Latinized spelling: uranus) or world-order (kosmos, Latinized spelling: cosmos). Did it always exist, or did it come-to-be? It is perceptible and hence grasped by opinion, thus changeable and brought into being by some cause or agency, namely (though Timaeus does not say this out loud) the Designer. And of course he looked not to a physical model, but to an eternal archetype to create his marvelous product.[5]
Now Timaeus’ argument is weak here. He talks about coming-to-be in two different senses, one in which things are always changing and never staying the same; and one in which things are crafted or grow naturally into some more organized final state, such as a statue from clay (a craft product) or an oak tree from an acorn (natural object). Things that are always changing, including a statue that will eventually crumble to dust and an oak tree that will eventually die, do not necessarily need an agent to produce them, certainly not insofar as they are never final existences. And it is not obvious that an oak tree needs an agent in any case (though in some cases a farmer may plant an acorn).[6]
Timaeus goes on to point out that, since we are dealing with sensible objects in our theory of world-making, we are at best working with informed opinion, not indubitable scientific explanation. He will, henceforth, be elaborating a plausible story (eikōs mythos), not a scientific treatise.[7] But he insists that the universe is sublime and beautiful, and hence is a creation following a perfect paradigm, and that truth can be known by reason and understanding.[8]
The cosmologists who had written before Plato saw the cosmos as evolving from a state of relative unity to a state of productive complexity. Natural forces (often with a hint of divine guidance of a cosmic pilot, but no more than that) came together to produce an Earth surrounded by heavenly bodies and blessed with a moderate climate that varied between summer and winter, hot and cold, dry and wet, but always within limits that supported life.
Plato, by contrast, came out in his late writings as a creationist avant la lettre, an advocate of a divine designer who created the present cosmos, not ex nihilo, to be sure, for, as Timaeus goes on to explain, there were some kind of qualities and powers always present, perhaps like the virtual particles of a vacuum in modern quantum theory, but they lacked any coherence and stability until the Creator organized them into stuffs and structures and organisms. Such order and stability as the cosmos has owes its existence to the Creator.[9]
This seems to leave us on the borders of theology. Who is this Creator? Timaeus gives discriptors to him, but no cult name. Timaeus later suggests a brief theogony or genealogy of the gods of Greek religion.[10] His Creator creates the cosmos and its major furnishings, the Earth, the elements, the stars and planets. The Demiurge goes on to create the souls of humans in his mixing bowl. But he turns over to the Olympian gods the task of crafting their bodies, and presumably those of plants, animals, and humans.[11] So Timaeus (on half of Plato) avoids the religious and political pitfall of dismissing the gods of Greek religion. But he replaces the cosmological functions of the gods—in Hesiod’s Theogony, the birth of Chaos creates a space for the earth, Gaia or Mother Earth is born, along with Heaven and Ocean (the water circling the inner continents) and Sea (the inner Seas including the Mediterranean)—with the rational acts of a cosmic Architect who arranging everything for the best.[12] When it comes to making known the Creator, Timaeus introduces a measure of agnosticism: “To discover the Creator and Father of our universe is a labor, and having done so to reveal him to everyone is quite impossible.”[13]
[1] Plato Sophist 265a-e; Statesman 269c-270a; Philebus 26e-27c, 28d-e; Laws 10, 903b-e.
[2] Plato Timaeus 17a-19e.
[3] Plato Timaeus 20d-27b.
[4] Plato Timaeus 27d-28b.
[5] Plato Timaeus 28b-29a.
[6] See Graham (1990).
[7] Plato Timaeus 29b-d. On plausibility and likeness, see Bryan 2012.
[8] Plato Timaeus 29a.
[9] See Sedley 2007, Gregory 2007.
[10] Plato Timaeus 40d-41d.
[11] Plato Timaeus 41d-42e.
[12] Hesiod Theogony 116-133.
[13] Plato Timaeus 28c.