This book offers a new interpretation of Platoâs Timaeus in which the cosmological myth is identified with a thought experiment. Timaeusâ discourse asks us what we would do if we were a divine craftsman in charge of fashioning the universe by bestowing order upon a chaotic milieu. After having adopted three criteria to be satisfied to belong to the category of thought experiment (1: counterfactuality; 2: necessity of image productions; 3: cognitive progress), it is defended that Timaeusâ speech contains both a sequence of deductive arguments and the possibility to combine these arguments into different mental models of the universe.
The intended audience includes researchers in classics, philosophers specialized in ancient philosophy, and undergraduate and graduate students taking courses on Plato, epistemology, or cosmology as part of their degrees. The book will also be a useful reading to anyone interested in classical antiquity.