Plato’s Academy - Academia de Platão

Around 387 BC, Plato (c.427–347 BC) founded his school in a part of Athens called Academy. Here he wrote and directed studies, and the Academy soon became the focal point for mathematical study and philosophical research. It is said that over the entrance appeared the inscription: ‘Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter here’.
Plato believed that the study of mathematics and philosophy provided the finest training for those who were to hold positions of responsibility in the state. In his Republic he discussed the Pythagoreans’ mathematical arts of arithmetic, plane and solid geometry, astronomy and music, explaining their nature and justifying their importance for the ‘philosopher-ruler’. His Timaeus includes a discussion of the five regular solids – tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron.
Aristotle (384–322 BC) became a student at the Academy at the age of 17 and stayed there for twenty years until Plato’s death. He was fascinated by logical questions and systematised the study of logic and deductive reasoning. In particular, he referred to a proof that that 2 cannot be written in rational form a/b, where a and b are integers, and he discussed syllogisms such as: ‘all men are mortal; Socrates is a man; thus Socrates is mortal’.
In Raphael’s fresco The School of Athens, Plato and Aristotle are pictured on the steps of the Academy. Plato is holding a copy of his Timaeus and Aristotle is carrying his Ethics.
[Greece 1978, 1998]