PLATO

(c429-347 BC)

   Greek philosopher, included here partly because his dialogues Timaeus and its appendix Critias (c350 BC) have been taken as examples of PROTO SCIENCE FICTION in their references to the state of ATLANTIS and its sinking; additionally, and much more importantly, TheRepublic (undated, but earlier than Timaeus, which is in a sense its afterword) in part describes an ideal state, or UTOPIA, the first literary work to do so in any detail. P's importance to the history of utopian thought was absolutely central for more than 2000 years, but his emphasis on an ideal stasis over the constant changes and evolution of the sensual world was challenged in some 19th-century utopias, and of course runs absolutely counter to the social ideas of most 20th-century sf writers. Arthur C. CLARKE's The City and the Stars (1948; exp 1956) is effectivelyan attack on a Platonic utopia. P's disapproval of poetry in The Republic is a good example of his admonitory prescriptions, and his remarks on children's games in Book VII of The Laws (a late work) are even better: ". . . when innovations creep into their games and constant changes are madein them, the children cease to have a sure standard of what is right and proper. The person most highly esteemed by them is the one who introduces new devices in form or colour, or otherwise.There can be no worse evil for a city than this..Change..is most dangerous for a city." Nevertheless, P was one of the first philosophers at least to consider the idea of change, that the future could be better than the past - an imaginative leap ancestral to the whole of sf.P's famous metaphor of the cave reappears everywhere in sf, especially in stories of CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH: we are prisoners in a cave and take the flickering shadows cast by the firelight on the walls as reality; but the philosopher finds his way into the sunlight and sees that he has hitherto been deceived.

   PN

   See also: SOCIOLOGY; VIRTUAL REALITY.