Have you seen a redwood tree? Tallest and biggest in forms on earth of tree kind. We do love to look at biggest, smallest, precious and dirtiest things in the world. Somehow or other these extremes drag us into a discussion, anywhere. Hence, I could not, not talk about the General Sherman, the biggest tree by volume. I have known similar gentle Giant in my early life. Which stood strong and old just like the General Sherman. A tree is a home to a thousand species. And philosophically speaking, a tree is good place to understand philosophy of forms.
Here in this article, I describe forms, in two different methods. One is in platonic way. The other is just a scientific way. However, when you learn the scientific way you would understand that there exist no two methods. Everything seems to be platonic or "imaginary anyway"
Platonic Forms.
The Theory of Forms, also known as the Doctrine of Ideas, is a concept in philosophy attributed to the Classical Greek philosopher Plato. According to this theory, true reality lies beyond physical objects. If we break down the ideas, as follows.
Forms (Ideas): Plato proposed that there exist non-physical, timeless, and unchangeable Forms (sometimes also called Ideas). These Forms are the essential, perfect essences of all things. For example, there is a Form of “Beauty,” a Form of “Justice,” and so on. These Forms are not directly perceivable in the physical world.
you can read about these platonic forms here, in this article on platonic love.
Imitations: Objects and matter in the physical world are mere imitations or imperfect reflections of these Forms. When we encounter something beautiful or just, we recognize it because it resembles the ideal Form of Beauty or Justice. I have further discussed these ideas in the reflectors and reflections of life.
Plato believed thinking often on these ideal platonic forms will put us in a position to attain, or raise us above the worldly forms, hence one step closer to truth.
Keeping this in mind, I invite you to read following chapter on a tree, from the book what is time. And you would understand this is another way to look at forms. It is true at Plato's time most of scientific knowledge was not there to see beyond what is seen from the naked eye. However, we have the luxury of science and YouTube so we can. Shouldn't we be doing this already?
Truth about things we see - philosophy of forms.
Trees are our friends. If they are not here, we would not be here. Hug the trees, back again to save the world. Let’s look at a tree, with our eyes. We see leaves, branches, trunk, and maybe part of the root. Imagine you went to see General Sherman, the redwood. Its immense trunk fascinates us. Now does the leaf of giant Sherman, is giant Sherman? Or the trunk? Or the roots? Taken separately there is no giant Sherman. But if taken together, ah, there it is the biggest living tree with the biggest trunk! See the magic happens in the mind.
Let’s look at a few other examples to understand more and more truths about what we see.
Let’s look at a tree again, this time with a microscope, now our eyes have better resolution and magnification. Now, let's look at a leaf of this big red giant. Under the microscope. What do we see?
We would see cells, cell walls, epidermal cells, spores, palisade tissue, spongy tissue, phloem etc. Now if you were a biologist, you would know better that a leaf is a collection of cells in special arrangement. The question is are these individual components a ‘leaf’? If not, a ‘leaf’ is created in our imagination.
We can go further, let's look at a cell under more magnification. We would be able to understand the individual parts of the epidermal cell. A cell wall, membrane, plasma, a nucleus etc. Do these individual parts represent a leaf? No, but the collection is called an epidermal cell. So again, the epidermal cell is an imagination, an illusion of mind, in nature there is no epidermal cell. It is a creation of the human mind.
Still there is some depth that we can go, Let's look at these individual cells using an electron microscope. What would we see? We would see structures of proteins, lipids, nucleic acid bathed in a tub of water covered by a membrane making individual parts of the cell. We can move from our biology to our chemistry now.
If we look at protein, what is it composed of? It is a three-dimensional structure made of a large array of amino acids (a kind of bio chemicals). Does this individual amino acid represent a protein? No, it does not, it is the collection, the specific structure, if it is not, it would be an abnormal protein. So, an individual protein is not something in nature. It is still a man-made concept.
What about amino acids? That should be something in nature. However, still we can go deep. Amino acids are specific arrangements of different elements/atoms arranged in specific form. So, amino acid is still a man-made relative truth.
What about an atom? Are we there yet? Are we at the end? Have we found the ultimate truth in an atom?
Not at all there are subatomic particles in the form of protons, neutrons and electrons together to form an atom. So, atoms are again an arbitrary concept.
What about a proton, in the standard model of particle physics still it is considered as a composite particle composed of three valence quarks.
These are the depths the modern science has looked into, and we find that the more we search, the more we find that examples for nothing are absolute truths. So, the trees that we see can be,
A tree
A collection of leaves, roots and a trunk
A collection of cells
A collection of proteins, nucleic acid, lipids and water
A collection of atoms
A collection of subatomic particles
Plato attributed those forms, are imaginary perfect things. But when we question reality, we come to know that everything we see outside, is not outside at all. Really speaking we do not know what is outside. It seems even a concept of a tree, or a leaf or a cell is platonic at its core, as in reality there is nothing like that in the outside world. Hence, whatever we make up with our language and in our mind are platonic. What is the value of something if it is totally lies in someone's imagination? Even being 'Rich' or 'Poor' is a thought in mind.
Plato described these platonic forms are non-physical, timeless and unchangeable things. However, it seems, everything that we 'see' and 'hear' are non-physical, and timeless, as they are platonic. But it seems change is the only constant thing which underly them, not persistence.
Understanding this makes the mind liberated from the continuous loop of struggle. When I sit on my chair and type these words, I can see the juggler, the magician of the mind, still juggles all the words in English, to create a meaning out of it. Which will never be possible.
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