/lit/ - Literature

I think this is one of the most beautiful pages of Plato's.

>“There are many reasons,” he said, “but the greatest is this; if anyone should say that the ideas cannot even be known if they are such as we say they must be, no one could prove to him that he was wrong, unless he who argued that they could be known were a man of wide education and ability and were willing to follow the proof through many long and elaborate details; he who maintains that they cannot be known would be unconvinced.”
> “Why is that, Parmenides?” said Socrates.
>“Because, Socrates, I think that you or anyone else who claims that there is an absolute idea of each thing would agree in the first place that none of them exists in us.”
> “No, for if it did, it would no longer be absolute,” said Socrates.
> “You are right,” he said. “Then those absolute ideas which are relative to one another have their own nature in relation to themselves, and not in relation to the likenesses, or whatever we choose to call them, which are amongst us, and from which we receive certain names as we participate in them. And these concrete things, which have the same names with the ideas, are likewise relative only to themselves, not to the ideas, and, belong to themselves, not to the like-named ideas.”

this passage is still useful today because it clarifies the difference between
>the unknown
which is real
>the unknowable
which is an illusion

It is tightly connected with something David Hilbert wrote 2400 years later:
>We must not believe those, who today, with philosophical bearing and deliberative tone, prophesy the fall of culture and accept the ignorabimus. For us there is no ignorabimus, and in my opinion none whatever in science. In opposition to the foolish ignorabimus our slogan shall be: We must know — we will know!

>>18424405
Mathematics

>>8907608
As long as you want to learn, you're never too old.
20 is probably exactly the right age.
Make sure you have a solid foundation of Maths.

Humanities fags status: Told.