A Platonic Bicycle

Hello friends! Le Bon David here. We had an avalanche of responses after the VeloDrone's story last week. Now those responses have created a further controversy. You demanded to know how Plato could have owned a bicycle. Well, I caught up with Plato yesteday and put the question to him:

Le Bon David: May I say, sir, that it is an honour to meet you. You are a man I have long admired.

Plato: The honor is mine, sir. I have been a keen reader of Velosophy since it's inception.

Le Bon David: Very kind words, sir, very kind. Now let us get straight to the point. Have you or have you not at any time owned an actual bicycle?

Plato: First, my friend, I must make it clear that just as all my ideas come from the wise and venerable Socrates, so the bicycle, such as it was, belonged to him.

Le Bon David: Pray, continue.

Plato: Therefore when I say I had a bicycle, I mean to say that Socrates had a bicycle. And when I say that the bicycle caught fire, I mean to say that Socrates' bicycle caught fire. And when I say that it was hardly ideal, I mean to repeat a little witticism coined by Socrates himself.

Le Bon David: I see. Then the question is, was Socrates' bicycle a real bicycle?

Plato: No, it was an ideal bicycle. That is, he conceived of the bicycle by philosophical means. For as you know there were no actual bicycles in ancient Greece. We had wheels on our chariots and carts, but we had not invented steering, nor the pedal, nor had we thought of placing one wheel behind the other, until one day when something happened deep inside Socrates' cave.

Le Bon David: Intriguing! What was that?

Plato: A large log placed somewhat precariously on the top of the fire suddenly collapsed and fell to the floor of the cave where it continued burning, with the result that there were now two fires burning side by side. Now as you know, Socrates used to sit near the entrance of the cave, dreaming up ideal objects and imagining what they would look like.

Le Bon David: Did he indeed? I should have thought that would be somewhat unproductive.

Plato: No, no. He had, in fact just dreamed up an ideal sort of wheel. When the fire suddenly divided into two fires, all the other people in the cave........

Le Bon David: Other people in the cave?

Plato: Yes, yes, prisoners remember? In the allegory they represent the general public, who do not know how to philosophise.

Le Bon David: Ah yes, I do remember.

Plato: So, the other people in the cave, who were sitting looking at the shadows thrown up on the wall by the objects that were passing in front of the fire behind them .....are you with me?

Le Bon David: No, what objects are these?

Plato: You would have to ask Socrates. But I believe he used to try and demonstrate his ideas using his fingers as puppets. I know he used to do an awfully realistic rabbit.

Le Bon David: So what happened that day?

Plato: Well! The people were looking at Socrates' finger wheel, not being particularly excited by it, when all at once they saw the shadows of two wheels one in front of the other, and they began shouting at once. Look Socrates! You've made a bicycle! And that was the beginning of it.

Le Bon David: The idea caught fire, so to speak!

Plato: Yes, my friend, I believe you have understood me perfectly.

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?

On The VeloDrone's Wall

Great response from readers of the VeloDrone yesterday! Here's just a sample:

Hi VeloDrone! Love the name of your bicycle. I used to call mine The Flying Dutchman. Don't know where it is now. Richard Wagner.

VeloDrone! Interesting you should see your bike Candide as female, when the Candide of your novel was a young man. Sigmund Freud.

My own bicycle was a Utilitarian. J S Mill.

My bike was always catching fire. Not ideal. Plato.

Good article VeloDrone! I used to share a bicycle with Engels. It was the community bike. We rode her into a wall. Karl Marx.

Way to go VeloDrone! Candide is tops! I had a bike in the old days, I called her The Holy Ghost. Boy, she was fast. Blink and you missed her. John the Baptist.

My bike was an Epistemological Nihilist. Denied all knowledge, always getting me lost. Dr Livingstone.

Mine was an Enigma. I rode her till her chain fell off. Alan Turing

A talking bicycle. Wish I had one! Alberto Contador.

Boys! Boys! They're only bicycles! Germaine Greer.