Wheels on Fire

So what do you understand by the term non sequitur? I asked Pliny, a little later on.

By that I mean a statement that does not follow logically from the one that came before, he replied.

And what kind of bicycle did you use to ride when you were young? I continued.

Yes, that's the idea. Although yours was not a statement but a question.

That's because I was changing the subject, not trying to give you an example.

Oh. Well, you should know that there were no bicycles in ancient Rome. And so I didn't have one.

Ah! I wondered why you didn't add a comment to the VeloDrone's wall the other day. How do you explain the fact that Plato did, then?

Plato! What did he write?

He wrote that his bicycle used to catch on fire, which was less than ideal.

You need to take everything that Plato writes with a grain of salt. It doesn't matter what it is, he will always claim he's got one.

Like those Ebay ads?

Yes. It's his way of trying to promote his Cave Allegory, and his theory of ideal forms. There's no reason why he shouldn't have seen an ideal bicycle go trundling by and casting a shadow on the wall of the cave, I suppose. And if it came too near the fire, well.......

But where would he have got the concept?

That's just the point. He didn't need the concept. The world of ideals exists separately from the world of ordinary things.

OK then, but having seen it how would he have known what it was?

Who's to say that he knew what it was?