Timaeus and Critias
By: Plato ; translated by Robin Waterfield ; with an introduction and notes by Andrew Gregory.
Contributors: Waterfield, Robin.; Gregory, Andrew.; Plato.
Series: Oxford world's classics
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 163
ISBN-13: 9780192807359
Subjects: Cosmology -- Early works to 1800.; Atlantis.
Genres: Early works to 1800.
Work titles: Timaeus.
Description: "Timaeus, one of Plato's acknowledged masterpieces, is an attempt to construct the universe and explain its contents by means of as few axioms as possible. The result is a brilliant, bizarre, and surreal cosmos - the product of the rational thinking of a creator god and his astral assistants, and of purely mechanistic causes based on the behaviour of the four elements. At times dazzlingly clear, at times intriguingly opaque, this was state-of-the-art science in the middle of the fourth century BC. The world is presented as a battlefield of forces that are unified only by the will of God, who had to do the best he could with recalcitrant building materials"--Cover, p. 4.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Timaeus; title: Critias.