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HERE IS THE ORIGINAL THAT WAS APPROVED BY THE AUTHOR, THE REFEREES, AND THE
AREA EDITOR:
Plato’s Theaetetus, which stylometric
evidence places in the middle/late to the late period of Plato's writing career,
is the philosopher’s most sustained discussion on knowledge, but it is also, and
quite surprisingly, an abortive one: despite its length and intellectual
sophistication, the dialogue fails to yield an adequate definition of the
concept, thus ending inconclusively. And yet, despite (or perhaps on
account of) its lack of a positive definition of knowledge, the Theaetetus,
which, according to Paul Shorey, '... is [arguably] the richest in thought of all the Platonic
dialogues,' has been the source of endless scholarly fascination. For its main
emphasis on the nature of cognition notwithstanding, it also considers a wide
variety of issues which, in some form or shape, can be found in other Platonic
dialogues, such as Socratic dialectic, Heraclitean flux, Protagorean relativism,
the rhetorical versus the philosophic life, and false judgment....Plato’s
Theaetetus: in it he is portrayed as having shown the irregularity of √3,
√5, etc. up to √17. The passage has been interpreted in many different ways and
its historicity has been disputed.
HERE IS THE EXTENSIVELY COPYEDITED VERSION THAT WAS PUBLISHED:
The Theaetetus is one of the middle to later dialogues of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato.
Plato was Socrates’ student and Aristotle’s teacher. As in most of Plato’s
dialogues, the main character is Socrates. In the Theaetetus, Socrates converses with Theaetetus,
a boy, and Theodorus, his mathematics teacher. Although this dialogue features Plato’s most sustained discussion on the concept of knowledge, it fails to yield an adequate definition of knowledge, thus ending inconclusively. Despite this lack of a positive definition, the Theaetetus has been the source of endless scholarly fascination. In addition to its main emphasis on the nature of cognition, it considers a wide variety of philosophical issues: the Socratic Dialectic, Heraclitean Flux, Protagorean Relativism, rhetorical versus philosophical life, and false judgment. These issues are also discussed in other Platonic dialogues.
...In the dialogue, Theodorus is portrayed as having shown the irrationality of the square roots of 3, 5,
6, 7, ... ,17. Irrational numbers are those that are not equal to any fraction
having whole numbers in the numerator and denominator. The passage has been interpreted in many different ways, and its historical accuracy has been disputed.
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