Plato Constructs a Mathematical Model of "The Cosmos"

Plato , Aristotle's teacher and Socrates' pupil, absorbed the Pythagorians' mathematical view of the Cosmos, if not their mystical ideas, on his travels in Italy. In his extensive writings (dialogs) he passed on his mathematical models of the world and the night sky in contrast to Aristotle's naturalist and philosophical reasoning.

Although Plato's writings survived, they did not re-enter Europe at the dawn of the new European universities the way Aristotle's did - so it was Aristotle, not Plato whose views dominated the next 500 years of European science.

As revolutionary as they were to the European mind, circa 1000 AD, you could say that Aristotle constrained in some ways the breakthrough discoveries of Copernicus , Galileo and Newton . It’s interesting to imagine how those 500 years would have unfolded if it had been Plato and not Aristotle whose writings had leaked across the Pyrenees into the new European universities.

More interesting, though, is the realization that such random chance can profoundly influence the path of human development and accepted thinking.