The much-anticipated anthology on Plato's"Timaeus"--Plato's singular dialogue on the creation of the universe, the nature of the physical world, and the place of persons in the cosmos--examining all dimensions of one of the most important books in Western Civilization: its philosophy, cosmology, science, and ethics, its literary aspects and reception. Contributions come from leading scholars in their respective fields, including Sir Anthony Leggett, 2003 Nobel Laureate for Physics. Parts of or earlier versions of these papers were first presented at the "Timaeus" Conference, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in September of 2007.
To this day, Plato's "Timaeus" grounds the form of ethical and political thinking called Natural Law--the view that there are norms in nature that provide the patterns for our actions and ground the objectivity of human values. Beyond the intellectual content of the dialogue's core, its literary frame is also the source of the myth of Atlantis, giving the West the concept of the "lost world."
From Platonic space to Presocratic vortices, from Philosopher-Kings to Craftsman-Gods and from modern physics to the myth of Atlantis, "One Book, The Whole Universe" presents in one volume the most up-to-date and penetrating scholarship on Plato's "Timaeus" by some of the greatest minds alive today. Contributors
Ann Bergren
Gabor Betegh
Sean Carroll
Alan Code
Zina Giannopoulou
Verity Harte
Thomas Kjeller Johansen
Charles H. Kahn
Anthony J. Leggett
Anthony A. Long
Stephen Menn
Richard D. Mohr
Kathryn A. Morgan
Alexander P.D. Mourelatos
Ian Mueller
Thomas M. Robinson
Barbara M. Sattler
Allan Silverman
Jon Solomon
Anthony Vidler
Matthias Vorwerk
Donald Zeyl

This book is a collection of dovetailing essays which together interpret and assess the chief arguments and texts which make up Plato's cosmology. Arguments in the Timaeus, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, and Laws X are analyzed with an eye to problems which affect the wider understanding of Plato's metaphysics, theology, epistemology, psychology, and physics. New interpretations are given to Plato's views on the role and characteristics of his craftsman God, the nature and status of Forms, the nature of time and eternity, the status and nature of space and the phenomenal realm, and the nature of and relations between reason, souls, bodies, and motion. The book is critically sympathetic to the Platonic project, at least to the extent that it argues that many (though not all) features of the Platonic cosmology are more intelligible and coherent than usually supposed by critics. It defends the view that for Plato God makes the world in the way that a carpenter cuts a board to be exactly a yard long - by applying a yard stick to the board and removing the excess wood. This view of a making requires that there be standards or measures that exist independently both of the agent who creates and the world on which he works. These standards are Plato's Forms. Transcendent Forms cannot be excised from the Platonic metaphysics as many modern critics have been trying to do in an attempt to make Plato respectable by today's criteria of philosophical decency. This work presents a revised and updated edition of the author's 1985 book The Platonic Cosmology (E.J. Brill, Leiden) together with four revised and updated essays by the author on Plato's metaphysics, and a wholly new essay, ""Extensions,"" which expands the themes of the book into wider philosophical contexts.