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Plato's dialogue the Timaeus-Critias presents two connected accounts, that of the story of Atlantis and its defeat by ancient Athens and that of the creation of the cosmos by a divine craftsman. This book offers a unified reading of the dialogue. It tackles a wide range of interpretative and philosophical issues. Topics discussed include the function of the famous Atlantis story, the notion of cosmology as 'myth' and as 'likely', and the role of God in Platonic cosmology. Other areas commented upon are Plato's concepts of 'necessity' and 'teleology', the nature of the 'receptacle', the relationship between the soul and the body, the use of perception in cosmology, and the work's peculiar monologue form. The unifying theme is teleology: Plato's attempt to show the cosmos to be organised for the good. A central lesson which emerges is that the Timaeus is closer to Aristotle's physics than previously thought.

Philosophy, Ancient --- Cosmology, Ancient --- Teleology --- Necessity (Philosophy) --- Philosophie ancienne --- Cosmologie antique --- Téléologie --- Nécessité (Philosophie) --- History --- Histoire --- Plato. --- Cosmology --- Early works to 1800. --- Cosmology. --- Teleology. --- Téléologie --- Nécessité (Philosophie) --- Design in natural phenomena, Study of --- Final cause --- Philosophy --- Causation --- Evolution --- Astronomy --- Deism --- Metaphysics --- Criticism and interpretation. --- Arts and Humanities --- Cosmology - Early works to 1800. --- Teleology - Early works to 1800.

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"This work investigates how ancient philosophers understood productive knowledge or technê and used it to explain ethics, rhetoric, politics and cosmology. In eleven chapters leading scholars set out the ancient debates about technê from the Presocratic and Hippocratic writers, through Plato and Aristotle and the Hellenistic age (Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics), ending in the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Proclus. Amongst the many themes that come into focus are: the model status of ancient medicine in defining the political art, the similarities between the Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of technê, the use of technê as a paradigm for virtue and practical rationality, technê's determining role in Platonic conceptions of cosmology, technê's relationship to experience and theoretical knowledge, virtue as an 'art of living', the adaptability of the criteria of technê to suit different skills, including philosophy itself, the use in productive knowledge of models, deliberation, conjecture and imagination"--

Philosophy, Ancient --- Techne (Philosophy) --- Theory of knowledge --- History of philosophy --- Philosophy, Ancient. --- Technology --- Philosophy.