ScienceDaily (June 29, 2010) — Plato was the Einstein of
Greece's Golden Age and his work founded Western culture
and science. Dr Jay Kennedy's findings are set to revolu-
tionise the history of the origins of Western thought.
Dr Kennedy, whose findings are published in the leading
US journal Apeiron, reveals that Plato used a regular
pattern of symbols, inherited from the ancient followers
of Pythagoras, to give his books a musical structure.
A century earlier, Pythagoras had declared that the
planets and stars made an inaudible music, a 'harmony of
the spheres'. Plato imitated this hidden music in his books.
The hidden codes show that Plato anticipated the Scien-
tific Revolution 2,000 years before Isaac Newton, discover-
ing its most important idea--the book of nature is written
in the language of mathematics. The decoded messages also
open up a surprising way to unite science and religion.
The awe and beauty we feel in nature, Plato says, shows that
it is divine; discovering the scientific order of nature is
getting closer to God. This could transform today's culture
wars between science and religion.
"Plato's books played a major role in founding Western
culture but they are mysterious and end in riddles," Dr
Kennedy, at Manchester's Faculty of Life Sciences explains.
"In antiquity, many of his followers said the books con-
tained hidden layers of meaning and secret codes, but this
was rejected by modern scholars.
"It is a long and exciting story, but basically I cracked
the code. I have shown rigorously that the books do contain
codes and symbols and that unraveling them reveals the hidden
philosophy of Plato.
"This is a true discovery, not simply reinterpretation."
This will transform the early history of Western thought,
and especially the histories of ancient science, mathematics,
music, and philosophy.
Dr Kennedy spent five years studying Plato's writing and
found that in his best-known work the Republic he placed
clusters of words related to music after each twelfth of the
text--at one-twelfth, two-twelfths, etc. This regular pattern
represented the twelve notes of a Greek musical scale. Some
notes were harmonic, others dissonant. At the locations of the
harmonic notes he described sounds associated with love or
laughter, while the locations of dissonant notes were marked
with screeching sounds or war or death. This musical code was
key to cracking Plato's entire symbolic system.
Dr Kennedy, a researcher in the Centre for the History of
Science, Technology and Medicine, says: "As we read his books,
our emotions follow the ups and downs of a musical scale.
Plato plays his readers like musical instruments."
However Plato did not design his secret patterns purely for
pleasure--it was for his own safety. Plato's ideas were a dan-
gerous threat to Greek religion. He said that mathematical
laws and not the gods controlled the universe. Plato's own
teacher had been executed for heresy. Secrecy was normal in
ancient times, especially for esoteric and religious knowledge,
but for Plato it was a matter of life and death. Encoding his
ideas in secret patterns was the only way to be safe.
Plato led a dramatic and fascinating life. Born four centur-
ies before Christ, when Sparta defeated plague-ravaged Athens,
he wrote 30 books and founded the world's first university,
called the Academy. He was a feminist, allowing women to study
at the Academy, the first great defender of romantic love (as
opposed to marriages arranged for political or financial
reasons) and defended homosexuality in his books. In addition,
he was captured by pirates and sold into slavery before being
ransomed by friends.
Dr Kennedy explains: "Plato's importance cannot be overstated.
He shifted humanity from a warrior society to a wisdom society.
Today our heroes are Einstein and Shakespeare--and not knights
in shining armour--because of him."
Over the years Dr Kennedy carefully peeled back layer after
symbolic layer, sharing each step in lectures in Manchester and
with experts in the UK and US.
He recalls: "There was no Rosetta Stone. To announce a result
like this I needed rigorous, independent proofs based on crystal-
clear evidence.
"The result was amazing--it was like opening a tomb and finding
new set of gospels written by Jesus Christ himself.
"Plato is smiling. He sent us a time capsule."
Dr Kennedy's findings are not only surprising and important;
they overthrow conventional wisdom on Plato. Modern historians
have always denied that there were codes; now Dr Kennedy has
proved otherwise.
He adds: "This is the beginning of something big. It will take a
generation to work out the implications. All 2,000 pages contain
undetected symbols.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100628111846.htm
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/british-scholar-claims-to-have-unlocked-platos-musical-and-mathematical-code/19536672