Mathematics and geometry had a specific gravity in it, as I said at the beginning of this article. So etymologically it means ' the garden or field of Academos'.Īlthough the news is scarce, we must assume that this center would continue the educational program that Plato disclosed in the ' Republic' dialogue. ' Xenocrates wanted to study with him without knowing music or geometry or astronomy, and Plato said,' Go, because you do not have the handholds of philosophy '.īut what was Plato's Academy? The name, which comes from the Latin Academy and this from Greek akademeia, Ἀκαδημία, defines the institution, school or philosophical-political corporation founded by Plato in the outskirts of the city of Athens, near the walls, which receives the name of the place where it was built, a space in which there was a shrine to the mythical hero attic Academo (minor in Greek mythology who revealed to the Dioscuri the place where Helena was hiding). ' ageometretos me eisito' ἀγεωμέτρητος μὴ εἰσίτω.ĭiogenes Laertius in IV, 10 has an anecdote that shows the importance of geometry in Plato's teaching:

'In Plato's Academy, before the temple of the Muses was written: ' Let None But Geometers Enter Here', This tradition is transmitted by several commentators of Aristotle, as Elias in his ' Commentary on the Categories, XVIII, 118, 18-19: The tradition says that this phrase was recorded at the entrance of the Academy of Plato.

Con academy geometry