Plato, Socrates and Glaucon’s Fate
The astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus studied Plato’s writings in the original Greek, and found in him a kindred spirit. In his main work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Copernicus draws on what the philologist František Novotný describes as Plato’s ‘metaphysical heliocentric argument from the Republic’ — his characterization of the sun as the god and ruler of the visible sphere and image of the Good, the unifying source and highest principle of reality.
