indignantly, then turns to pages #1050-1. And
what sort of demonstration of this second
postulate does he offer?
STRANGER: On the other hand, will we not also
be ready to assert that we do in fact hear words
spoken and see acts done which at one time
exceed the essentially right measure and at
another time fall short of it? Is it not just this
matter of attaining the due measure which
marks off good men from bad in human society?
The Chimæra: That’s not much of a proof. The words or
actions that impress one observer as ideal may
strike another as excessive or inadequate.
Similarly “good” and “bad” are subjective terms.
Plato is guilty of a non sequitur.
The Sphinx: True. If the stranger had been talking with
someone like Protagoras instead of the docile
young Socrates, The Statesman would have
floundered [and foundered] right there.
The Chimæra: Note that, immediately after making
that statement, Plato tries to reinforce it by
denying that statecraft - or any other art - can exist
without it. Thus he assumes that statecraft has
already been proved to be an absolute standard,
when in fact it has not. Two unproved statements
cannot be used to prove each other, and so Plato is
guilty of a second logical fallacy, generally known
as interdependence.
The Sphinx: Since the rest of The Statesman hinges
upon young Socrates’ blind disregard of these two
fallacies, is there a point in our discussing it
further? What we have uncovered here is not some
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relatively-unimportant digression. The subsequent
structure of The Statesman is one of peeling away
inadequate manifestations of statesmanship,
leaving, theoretically, the Form itself at the core. If
there is not an agreed-upon Form, then the
peeling-away process is pointless.
The Chimæra: To be fair to Plato, let us examine his
idea of the Form of statesmanship. He turns to
page #1077.
STRANGER: If you will view the three arts we
have spoken of as a group with a common
character, you will be bound to see that none of
them has turned out to be itself the art of
statesmanship. This is because it is not the
province of the real kingly art to act for itself,
but rather to control the work of the arts which
instruct us in the methods of action. The kingly
art controls them according to its power to
perceive the right occasions for undertaking and
setting in motion the great enterprises of state.
The other arts must do what they are told to do
by the kingly art ... It is a universal art, and so
we call it by a name of universal scope. That
name is one which I believe to belong to this art
and this alone, the name of “statesmanship”.
The Sphinx: On the whole, that’s not a bad definition.
And, I might add, there is nothing in it which
necessitates the existence of an absolute standard
for statesmanship. A statesman can simply be a
person who is relatively skilled at emphasizing,
directing, and applying the various arts and
sciences of a state or community.
The Chimæra: So it would seem. In view of Plato’s
attack on “arch-Sophists” as being the leaders of
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all but the perfect [Form] government, one might
suspect that he insisted upon an absolute standard
of government just so that he could attribute
everything less than that to Sophistry. Having
delivered such an uncomplimentary blow to both
Sophists and politicians, Plato could quietly
abandon the notion of an absolute governmental
standard. In fact, the definition that I just quoted
is thoroughly relativistic and cannot be applied in
terms of absolute standards.
The Sphinx: And just how do you draw that conclusion?
The Chimæra: If each subordinate art in a community
possesses its own standard of absolute perfection,
a raising or lowering of the application of that art
by the statesman would cause excess or deficiency
in the art itself. For example, the military art
statesman, for the good of the entire community,
prevents the military from conducting battles or
wars, the military art itself experiences a
deficiency. At a later date, if the military does go to
war, that deficiency will be evident as inexperience
in combat. Similarly, if the statesman orders the
military to fight too many battles or wars, excess
will occur. The military will become inefficient
through demoralization and attrition. To permit
the military to function at an ideal level, a
statesman would have to allow a level of
continuous or intermittent warfare. This,
obviously, would not be ideal for the state as a
whole.
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The Sphinx: Your point being that the ideal level of a
subordinate art as a thing in itself is at odds with
its ideal application by the statesman’s art.
The Chimæra: Yes, and there’s more to it than that. If
there is an ideal standard or level for both
component arts and the statesman’s art, then the
maintenance of that standard or level over a
period of time should ensure continuous and ideal
prosperity for the state as a whole, correct?
The Sphinx: Theoretically, yes.
The Chimæra: But conditions outside that state will
vary. A neighboring state may go to war against it,
for example.
The Sphinx: That would necessitate an alteration of
certain component arts - such as materiel
production, resource allocation, and military
activity - by the statesman, if he is to perform his
ideal role.
The Chimæra: But this means exceeding or falling
below the ideal standards of the individual
component arts. In other words, the ideal
standards of a component art by itself and the
ideal level of that art as a factor in the overall
community do not coincide. Therefore, if Plato
insists upon absolute standards, he places his
statesman in the position of having to
continuously violate the absolute standards of
component arts for the sake of his own art.
The Sphinx: I suppose Plato would argue that the ideal
standards of the component arts would include
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consideration for the proper level of those arts
within the community as a whole.
The Chimæra: That still begs the question. The posture
of the community must change as its external
environment changes. Therefore the component
arts will be subject to continuous revision of their
levels of activity and emphasis. They become
factors relative to the community, just as the
community becomes a factor relative to its
external environment. Q.E.D.
The Sphinx: So Plato’s definition of statesmanship is
valid only if both that art and the subordinate arts
are assumed to be variable and relativistic. How
intriguingly Sophistic!
The Chimæra: ... All of which brings us back to the
basic “relativity vs. absolutism” issue between
[what Plato would call] Sophistry and Philosophy
respectively. In a purely practical sense we cannot
continue to use those terms as Plato did, because
“ s o p h i s t r y ” n o w c o n v e y s t h e i m a g e o f
charlatanism, while “philosophy” embraces
relativistic as well as absolutist theories.
The Sphinx: True. The basic issue still remains, but the
old labels are no longer accurate. Why do you
suppose Plato felt so strongly that absolute
standards (Forms) existed?
The Chimæra: It probably started with what he
believed to be common sense. Our senses seem to
tell us that the world around us is made up of
reliable and permanent phenomena. A chair can
be counted upon to remain a chair, a desk a desk.
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The Sun and the planets behave regularly.
Relativism carried to its logical conclusion would
deny these things. How could the Sophists say that
“man is the measure of all things” as they walked
about on the solid and permanent ground of
Greece? Man cannot decide that the ground will be
there one minute and transmute into water the
next. Plato must have felt that he was arguing a
case for the way things actually are, even if he
encountered difficulties in justifying that position
logically.
The Sphinx: To be quite precise, a chair does not
remain a chair nor a desk a desk. Both are
undergoing continuous molecular breakdown,
which is not apparent to humans because they
normally experience sensory input at a relatively
swifter rate. Nor are astronomical bodies truly
constant; they only seem that way, again because
of the relative differences in their rates of change
and in human perceptive powers. At the other end
of the scale, there are phenomena that occur too
swiftly for human senses to register them. So they
seem “instantaneous”. So how dependable is
Plato’s “actual world”?
The Chimæra: I am tempted to say that, relatively
speaking [from the human point of view], the
world appears to adhere to absolute laws.
The Sphinx: Now that is an interesting statement! You
mean that the human ability to perceive relative
change exists in a comparatively small range, and
that phenomena changing at rates beneath or
above that range appear to be instantaneous or
permanent, as the case may be.
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The Chimæra: I suppose so.
The Sphinx: Can we not identify anything that is truly
permanent? That is in fact absolute and not
relative?
The Chimæra: That was Einstein’s problem. He was
able to postulate only one thing that was absolute -
the speed of light. But in that he was wrong.
The Sphinx: Wrong? Kindly explain!
The Chimæra: We run the risk of straying rather far
from The Statesman.
The Sphinx: But not from our ultimate topic.
Remember that we are trying to get a grip on true
conceptual analysis, and to do that we had better
resolve this relative/absolute issue once and for
all. According to the Platonic school of thought,
political science has an absolute standard, just as
physical laws do. That is the argument of The
Statesman. So now we have said that Einstein
reduced physics to only one absolute - the speed of
light - and you dispute even that. I for one
consider a resolution of this germane. If you
destroy absolutism in the physical world, then the
basis for attempting to parallel the “absolute
physical world” with an “absolute political world”
disappears altogether. So proceed.
The Chimæra: All right. According to Einstein’s second
fundamental postulate of the Special Theory of
Relativity, the velocity of light is always constant
relative to an observer, no matter how fast the
observer and the light source may be separating or
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converging. A derived equation states that, when
an object is moving with respect to an observer,
the mass of the object becomes greater, the
amount of increase depending upon the relative
velocity of object and observer. As the mass of the
object increases, its length along the axis of its
direction will decrease. At the speed of light, the
object’s mass becomes infinite, and its length
shrinks to zero. Since an infinite-plus amount of
energy would be required to raise the speed of an
infinite mass beyond the speed of light, such
hyper-light speed is not possible.
The Sphinx: So states the Special Theory.
The Chimæra: Now, internally the Special Theory is
consistent, because it treats the speed of light as a
constant and incorporates a series of equations
which rely upon that constant and are consistent
with one another. As the Special Theory applies to
phenomena which are substantially below the
speed of light, it is practical. The interrelationship
of mass and energy relative to 186,000 miles per
second (the Einstein speed of light constant) has
been formulated as E=mc2 and put into practice
through nuclear fission.
The Sphinx: Where, then, lies the fault?
The Chimæra: The Achilles’ Heel of the Special Theory
is that, while applying the principle of relativity to
everything else except the speed of light, it thereby
treats the speed of light as an exception to the
rule. An exception to a rule of physics is an
indication that the rule is inadequate to cover all
known phenomena. Einstein’s decision to treat the
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speed of light as a constant was based upon the
difference between the speed of light and non-
light-wave-related phenomena being so vast as to
make sub-186,000 mps light speed impossible to
detect; and also upon the inability of science to
detect anything traveling faster than 186,000
mps.
The Sphinx: Why this emphasis upon the word
“detect”?
The Chimæra: Detection and existence are two
different things, and that difference is crucial to
my argument. Now consider this hypothesis: If
light waves from a stationary source travel at
186,000 mps, and those light waves are the only
means an observer located elsewhere has for
detection of that source, what would happen if the
source were to begin moving away from the
observer at 186,001 mps? Those light waves that
are the sole source of the observer’s information
would no longer reach that observer. The waves
are now receding from him at 1 mps. As far as the
observer can detect, the light-source vanished
when its speed exceeded the speed of light. But did
the source in fact cease to exist? It did not. [And its
presence may be detectable by observing warps in
radiation waves and emissions affected by it - a
possible explanation of the “black hole”
phenomenon.]
The Sphinx: What about light-sources that are
proceeding in directions other than diametrically
away from an observer?
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The Chimæra: As for an object approaching an
observer at 186,000+ mps, it would arrive before it
could be detected at any distance as a moving
object, because humans do not possess
instruments that can identify approaching light
speeds in excess of 186,000 mps - which would be
the only means of identifying the object’s
approach. If the source were to proceed at a
tangent to an observer, it will seem to compress as
it approaches the speed of light. The explanation
for this illusion is more complex, but I may
approximate it by saying that the lateral
movement/oscillation of the emitted light waves is
less detectable as the lateral speed of the object
approaches 186,000 mps. At 186,000 mps the
waves are no longer detectable as waves - merely
as radiation; hence the illusion that the source has
transmutated from matter to energy.
The Sphinx: In fact, then, the Special Theory contains
its own invalidation. It states that everything is
relative, but it cannot exist as a formula without at
least one absolute constant - which, upon
examination, proves to be relative itself. Which
leaves only one question: If it is wrong, why does
E=mc2 work?
The Chimæra: Because the values which are plugged
into that formula are so far below 186,000 mps
that the speed of light might as well be treated as a
constant. For equations that include values closer
to 186,000 mps, the formula becomes increasingly
less accurate. Hence the preposterous calculation
that a mass at 186,000 mps becomes infinite. That
is simply the result of the formula’s intrinsic
distortion.
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The Sphinx: This is all very unsettling. So everything is
relative?
The Chimæra: Let’s not jump to conclusions.
Remember what we decided concerning Plato’s
own proof of absolute Forms?
The Sphinx: Yes. I referred to the Platonic Academy’s