Minutes

Below is a reverse chronological listing of basic meeting minutes. At the very least we cover what we did and what we’re going to do, but it’s often times’s helpful to go beyond this, e.g. including summaries of our understanding at a certain point in the text.

# 2026-07-05 prev next

Major works meeting

Continuing De Rerum Natura
Starting Book V, Cosmos and Civilization
Ending at line 420
Next week we’ll finish Book V

Minor works meeting

Continuing Sophist
Starting from just after 221c
Stopping at the beginning of 234d

Sophist reminder for next week:

We continue the discussion from where we left, namely that we have remainning to now define what a sophist is, after having successffuly agreed upon the name and definitino of what an angler is. This leads our argument to pursue the same line of inquiry but where it forked off ezrly in the ancestry tree from angler, namely that of hunters on land. We then continue to define hunting in increasingly divisive terms that lead us to a form of persuasian vs violence. So Sophists are within the persuasian ancestry, and from there we lay the foundation for deriving 5 or 6 other definitions, all equal, to sophist. More or less it amounts to persuaidng with knowledge for money to achieve a goal and people can hire them. The 6th (or maybe 5th) definitino was disputed, and this seemed important, because it had to do with cleansing, wihcih wass defined as separately the bad from the good, in terms of the soul. THeatetus and the vistor were not necessarily 100% in agreement on this definitino, and the metaphor of the wolf vs the dog came up. Where one sort of looks and acts like the other but is quite different.

This line of inuqiry then leads us to discuss whether something like a sophist, in other words someone who seems to know something about everything better than everyone else, is even categorically possible. It is not, then they begin to discuss whether someone can achieve the goal of seeming like they know more than experts on every subject, and it is.

# 2026-06-28 prev next

Major works meeting

Continuing De Rerum Natura
Starting from line 750 of Book IV, “The Senses”
Ending at the end of Book IV, around line 1280
Next week we’ll begin Book V

Minor works meeting

Review of Plato’s Theaetetus
Starting Sophist from just after 221c
Stopping at the beginning of 221c

Ending summary:

So far we welcome a visitor to the lyceum. And he is to give an account of what a sophist is by asking questions to theatetus for the audience. Before they can cover a subject important like this they agree to demonstrate the methodology by defining with words a different profession, namely an angler, which is a kind of fisherman. They start by agrteeing on the name, and then by differentiating categories they narrow down what it is preceisely that makes an angler and angler. Therefore they have a name and a definitino or an account.

# 2026-06-21 prev next

Major works meeting

Continuing De Rerum Natura
Starting Book IV, The Senses
Ending around line 750
Next week we’ll finish Book IV

Minor works meeting

No meeting

# 2026-06-14 prev next

Major works meeting

Continuing De Rerum Natura
Starting from line 430 of Book III, Mortality and the Soul
Ending at the end of Book III, around line 1090
Next week we’ll begin Book IV, The Senses

Minor works meeting

No meeting

# 2026-06-07 prev next

Major works meeting

Continuing De Rerum Natura
Starting from line 930 of Book II, The Dance of Atoms
Ending at line 430 of Book III, Mortality and the Soul
Next week we’ll finish Book III

Minor works meeting

Continuing Theaetetus
Starting from towards the end of 199b
Finishing the dialogue at 210d
Next meeting we’ll discuss the conclusion more and then begin Sophist

# 2026-05-31 prev next

Major works meeting

Continuing De Rerum Natura
Starting from around line 800 of Book I
End at line 930 of Book II, The Dance of Atoms
Next week we’ll finish Book II

Minor works meeting

Continuing Theaetetus
Starting from the middle of 189e
Ending towards the bottom of 199b

Theaetetus reminder for next week:

We continue the discussion of false judgement and Socrates introduces a new metaphor to truly determine if false judgement is indeed impossibnle, as he said before. However this new metaphor produces a contradiction, which is that either a man can not know something that he knows or that false judgement is possible.

“But as the matter now stands, either there is no such thing as false judgment; or a man may not know what he knows. Which do you choose?”

Then the proceed along different lines to better understand which. Socrates offers to do something crazy and describe what knowing is like, acknowledging that this is absurd becauase the whole discussion is predicated on them not already knowing what knowledge is, how could they describe what knowledge or knowing is like.

But they do it anyways and we form an argument around the difference between possessing and having, with this anaolgy of a hunter who has created an atrium for wild birds. Finally we left the meeting’s reading with describing a hunter who possesses the birds but often fails to have one or tyhe other as thye flutter about.

# 2026-05-24 prev next

Major works meeting

Starting De Rerum Natura from Book I, Matter and Void
Ending around line 800 of Book I
Next week we’ll finish Book I

Minor works meeting

No meeting

# 2026-05-17 prev next

Major works meeting

Continuing Diogenes’ Life of Epicurus
Starting and ending with Epicurus’ letter to Pythocles
Next week we’ll begin reading Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura

Minor works meeting

No meeting

# 2026-05-10 prev next

Mother’s Day

# 2026-05-03 prev next

Major works meeting

Continuing Diogenes’ Life of Epicurus, starting from his introduction as well as Epicurus’ last testament
Ending just just after finishing Epicurus’ letter to Herodotus
Next week we’ll cover Epicurus’ letter to Pythocles

Minor works meeting

Continuing Theaetetus
Starting from the midway in 179d
Ending around the middle of 189e

Theaetetus reminder for next week:

May 3, 2026—We continue the discussion by returning to the question of whether perception is knowledge. We dismiss this concept by adding a counterpart to everything is motion—that everything is one—and then disproving the motion part. The proof more or less is that if perception is in motion, then it is always fleeting, then knowledge is something that is not. Then we moved to the second half of the discussion and Theodorus abstains and promots Theatetus back to answer questions (since technically Theodorus satisfied his agreement to question Protagorus’ ideas).

The discussion turns to oneness and so far it’s been of a prelimnary nature, mostly around the idea of what is being and not being, like and unlike, and the first new proposal by Theatetus as to what Knowledge is is that it’s true judgement. Then the discuss false judgement and from that discussion prove that knowledge can’t be true judgement because there is no such thing as false judgement. Since judgiding comes from what you know, therefore it can’t be knowledge.

But this whole part of the discussion has been still kind of general and vague, so it’s hard to summarize.

# 2026-04-26 prev next

Major works meeting

Starting Diogenes’ Life of Epicurus
Ending with finishing Principle Doctrines and Letter to Menoeceus
Also read Proposition’s 1 and 2 of Euclid’s Elements

Minor works meeting

Continuing Theaetetus
Starting from 172b
Ending midway 179d

Theaetetus reminder for next week:

We continue the discussion regarding Theateatus’ assertion that knowledge is perception, along the lines laid out earlier from last week, especially regarding Protagoras’ rebuttal about man and the measure. We had a long digression about the characteristics between the man who succeeds in convincing others vs the philosophical man. This digression was not flattering towards the former. He is described as a slave due to working purely well under constraints but without being a master of determining those constraints himself. Moreover he is an expert at speaking poorly of others, braging about geneaology, and cares about little plots of land. The philosopher knows nothing bad to say of others and has a generally very broad view of everything, so much so that he doesn’t know his neighbor because he can not see a man, he only asks what is man. Then we return to from the digression to the final argument against protagoras, which has to do with the future. And Socraters clearly lays out that man is not any more the measure than he is able to make the future happen, which he obviously can’t. So they—theodorus and Socrates—agree that Protagorus is wrong, but they haven’t neccesarily put aside the argument of Perception being knowledge altogehtter. Socrates says they need to at it more closely before they can really be sure.

Andrew: future behavior comes up because they’re discussing laws made by a community being in their best interest, however laws exist to persuade or discourage future behaviour. Therefore the discussoin of the future proceeds from that argument, but it applies generally to the man as well.

# 2026-04-19 prev next

Major works meeting

Continuing Apollonius’ Argonautika
Starting from line 885 of Book IV
Ending Book IV around line 1780
Next week we’ll finish Book IV

Minor works meeting

Continuing Theaetetus
Starting from the beginning of 160a
Ending around 172b

Theaetetus reminder for next week:

Discussion was the rebuttal of Theatetus’ assertion that perception is truth via the arguments of Protagoras being wise, knowing what you don’t know and the impossosiblity therein, and perceiving a foreign lasnguage being different from understanding it. Then Socrates rescues Protagoras by defending the argument. He says that he merely argued something that is inescable: everyone has a private truth. However, he didn’t mean to say that each private truth is equall; some are better than others. Just that better is not because it is more true or less true, but better because of some betterness, i.e. consequences. Then Socrates and Theodorus start to tackle that discussion. We left off in the middle but Socrates argues that truth does have a critical component because in times of crises people want an expert to help them, presumably because there is some underlying reality to what they can do and not merely just a better form of perception that they can convince others of. The argument then went to a contradiction because if each person is entitled to their own reality then truth can have magnitude by how many people believe something. And therefore Protagoras’ own argument essentially allows others to “out vote” him so to speak which is a contradiction because he says that he says is the “Truth” (in his book).