Tri has a very divided reception with both strong support and strong criticism. Many of the most common complaints come from elements that are straightforward, which makes it worth looking at the series from a different angle.
From the beginning, Tri frames its premise with the lines:
"Demiurge, the soulless creator... Idea, the true form of the world..."
These ideas come from gnostic and platonic philosophy, where the Demiurge is a creator working within limits, and the Idea refers to the complete form of things.
The Digital World exists under a system that defines its limits, and everything inside it is shaped by those limits. The corruption in the Digimon is part of how those limits affect what can exist.
When the text refers to the Idea as the true form of the world, it means things have a complete version of what they are, but inside the Digital World they appear in reduced form because they are constrained by that framework.
Applied to Tri, this is seen in the Digital World, the Digimon, and the bonds between partners, which all struggle to exist fully within the conditions that shape them.
Think of it like trying to draw a dog you can clearly picture in your mind, but you're limited by the tools and the surface you're working on. The image in your mind is complete but what ends up on the page is a simplified version of it. In the same way, the Digital World can only show limited versions of things because everything inside it has to fit within the limits of the system.
In this sense:
1) infected Digimon behave as something the system can no longer keep stable within its defined structure.
2) bonds between Humans and Digimon become unstable as doubts, distance, or misalignment appear.
3) the Digital World is an environment that doesn't behave consistently, without any clear way to stabilize it.
Corrupted binary data, space warps, and the appearance of soulless replicas like Imperialdramon point to a world breaking down from within.
It may also be that Gennai has been messing with the system's code again following the same logic he described during 02, where alterations affected how Digimon related information persisted in human memory and perception. If that pattern is still active here, it would also help explain why most people seem to forget or partially remember what happened despite the scale of these events.
<<< 02 FLASHBACK >>>
<<< END OF 02 FLASHBACK >>>
Libra is an anomaly within the code sealed within Meicoomon from her origin. It functions as a preserved dataset from the Digital World prior to its reboot, including records from destructive entities such as Apocalymon.
This data was encrypted inside her without awareness or capacity to contain it. Meicoomon wasn't designed to carry such a burden, and her inherent instability made her unable to process it without distortion, causing her condition to collapse into irregular behavior. The virus also spread to other Digimon that came into contact or close proximity with her spreading like an epidemic as she kept escaping from Meiko.
Libra is a consequence of a system that embedded all data from the Digital World within a host that couldn't sustain it.
Meiko is Meicoomon's partner and struggles to understand her role, since she was never given guidance or the kind of journey the original chosen children went through in the Digital World years earlier. She tries to help her partner, even when she begins to associate herself with the instability around her.
Yggdrasil in Tri is a controlling intelligence of the Digital World that manifests through avatars such as Dark Gennai and the tri-Digimon Kaiser rather than direct presence. Through them, it pushes actions like the escalation of global instability, creating conditions that lead toward the Digital World reboot carried out by Homeostasis. It also exploits Maki Himekawa's grief over the loss of Bakumon by leading her to manage "Project R" and presenting the reboot as a way to make that reunion possible. This reboot restarts the Digital World and returns Digimon to their base state, restoring those who had been lost while erasing memory data and the bonds they formed with their human partners, allowing Digimon to exist freely and ultimately enabling the expansion of control over multiple worlds, including the Human World and other connected dimensions. This logic ties back to its origin as Yggdrasil, the world tree that connects multiple realms, reinterpreted in Tri as a central structure meant to maintain order across connected dimensions.
However, its operation falls under the regulatory framework of Homeostasis, so when Yggdrasil pushes its logic too far and breaks the conditions required for equilibrium, it can be shut down as implied at the end of Tri when Homeostasis orders its disconnection.
If you want to know more about Yggdrasil, it's worth reading So Who the Hell is Yggdrasil Anyway: A breakdown, which covers its different roles across the franchise and provides broader context beyond Tri.
Alphamon appears as an independent entity when something exceeds what the Digital World can handle, resolving the situation by removing what can't be contained, and it doesn't respond to motives or alliances, as its way of operating simply aligns with outcomes that restore a stable state, which may benefit certain parties.
Headcanon: the fall of the 02 team at the hands of Alphamon was probably collateral damage, in the context that they would've tried to intervene in the Digimon infection crisis and the situation would've escalated so much that they ended up within the area of instability that Alphamon removes without distinction to restore balance, like when Taichi falls into the abyss after the crack that opens during the fight between Alphamon, Jesmon, Omegamon and Meicoomon.
Jesmon / Huckmon acts as a messenger of Homeostasis, responding to signs of instability across the Digital World, especially in cases like Meicoomon. It doesn't act as hope or salvation but as a controlled measure against collapse.
Homeostasis in Tri operates as a balancing mechanism within the Digital World, restoring order when instability reaches a critical point. Its actions aren't guided by moral judgment but by the need to reestablish equilibrium, and it manifests through vessels such as Hikari, as well as intermediaries like Gennai and Jesmon.
In Digimon Adventure, following the Greymon and Parrotmon incident in 1995, Homeostasis scanned the chosen children and identified within them key traits that became the Crests, forming a framework for bonds between humans and Digimon, intended to enable evolution toward the Perfect level through those traits and maintain stability across both worlds.
In Tri, Homeostasis attempts to contain the Libra in Meicoomon by assigning Meiko as a chosen child. Although partial stability is achieved, the situation eventually escalates beyond control, leading Homeostasis to initiate a full system reboot.
The reboot was an emergency measure after the infection destabilized the system to a critical level, forcing Homeostasis to execute a full reset as a last resort to restore balance.
This process resulted in the loss of Digimon memories since identity data wasn't preserved during the reboot, a condition Homeostasis considered necessary to stabilize Libra.
The decision wasn't driven by malice but by structural limitation, as Homeostasis operates through systemic parameters where bonds are treated as variables within stability equations rather than factors defined by affect or moral value.
The reboot didn't resolve the Libra anomaly in Meicoomon because it wasn't a surface level corruption but a structural irregularity embedded within her data profile. System reboots can restore global stability, but they can't remove anomalies that are intrinsic to a host's core configuration.
But even without memory, the bonds reappear because the humans remain the same as before the reboot and the Digimon retain the same data they once resonated with. So when Taichi and Agumon meet again, they don't build something new from nothing but return to a pattern already established through their original bond, even if Agumon can't consciously remember it.
One of the most common criticisms of Tri is the absence of the 02 team. From the start, it's clear that this absence is a deliberate narrative choice rather than something omitted or forgotten.
The offscreen defeat of Daisuke, Ken, Miyako and Iori by Alphamon reinforces this shift in focus. While it may feel like the story should develop 12 chosen children alongside their Digimon and an already expanded new cast, including Meiko, Maki Himekawa, Daigo Nishijima, Homeostasis, Yggdrasil, Jesmon, Alphamon… I don't think it's realistic to expect that, especially in an OVA format. The story tried to stay centered on the original group and their current state of dispersion, identity and doubt.
This kind of focus isn't unfamiliar within the franchise. Previous entries such as Hurricane Touchdown and then 02 The Beginning also operate without the full original cast and function as complete stories without requiring everyone to be present.
Although I can understand that their absence feels abrupt with Alphamon defeating them early on and no friends or family raising alarms despite them being missing for months, especially during a period of viral crisis related to Digimon, it still comes across as a narrative choice to focus on the original chosen children, even if the execution isn't polished.
For a better experience watching Tri, it helps to approach it in chapters since platforms like Crunchyroll often split it into episodes and that makes the pacing easier to follow. It also helps to have seen Digimon Adventure, Our War Game, 02, Hurricane Touchdown and Diaboromon Strikes Back beforehand because Tri is directly connected to the events established in those stories. Choosing the original Japanese audio with subtitles can also make a difference since some dubbed versions alter nuances, while the original voice acting reflects more of the creators' intended tone and meaning.
The word information comes from the Latin informare: in- (within) + formare (to give form, to shape, to mould something). This is seen in philosophy. For Plato, Forms or Ideas are intelligible models of reality. For Aristotle, everything that exists is composed of matter and form. Matter is what something is made of. Form, which he calls morphé, is what organises that matter according to a principle. It is the morphé of language that makes scattered sounds become language rather than noise. Knowing meant receiving form in the intellect. To know (gnosis in Greek, cognoscere in Latin) was to be inwardly configured by the structure of what is known.
For many centuries this understanding was experienced daily. In medieval Europe and in the Byzantine world, for example, architecture, icons, music, the liturgical calendar and the organisation of urban space constantly oriented attention towards the above, to what transcends the individual. Even someone who was illiterate was not, etymologically speaking, uninformed or disinformed. On the contrary. They were deeply informed by those forms that structured daily life.
In modernity, this logic has been inverted. We remain surrounded by rites and symbols, but most of them are horizontal. Advertising, entertainment, social media, news cycles and consumption function as corrupted daily liturgies. Instead of opening vertical axes, they trap us within the plane of constant horizontal circulation and navel-gazing.
The Ancient Thinker Who Shaped Their Worlds || K. R. Queen
Never heard of this, thx for sharing, Keller has admitted to quoting LOTR b4 surgery; he is fond of the idea that he shared the same birthday as Bilbo/Frodo Baggins :D For Tim, he found great comfort when Samwise Gamgee looked up at the Stars in Mordor, he saw a white star shining through the clouds, a moment of breathtaking beauty that pierced his despair, reminding him that the Shadow was temporary and that light, high beauty, and hope existed beyond its reach, allowing him to find peace and fall asleep.
I remember there being a passage in the Return of the King, when exhausted Sam is travelling alongside Frodo through Mordor. He is heartbroken because he thinks there is no hope, but then he sees a star in the sky (probably Earendil's silmaril) and realizes that there are some things which evil cannot touch.
Wiles 2019: Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.
Mythopoeia (from Greek for “myth-making“) is the creation of new, artificial mythologies or fictional worlds by authors, poets, and filmmakers, popularised by J.R.R. Tolkien as a way to explore deeper truths & spiritual realities through imaginative storytelling, like creating elves or magic systems—rather than just retelling old myths. It’s a key element in fantasy literature, where writers build entire cultures, histories, and belief systems, making the fictional world feel ancient and real, often contrasting with purely materialistic views of the world.
Key Aspects:
▪ Myth-making: The act of inventing myths, folklore, and foundational stories for fictional universes, as seen in works like The LORD of the Rings or Narnia.
▪ Subgenre/Theme: A recognized element in speculative fiction, film, and games that involves creating rich, internally consistent mythologies.
▪ Sub-creation: Tolkien’s idea that humans, as “sub-creators,” can reflect divine creation by shaping their own stories and worlds, revealing deeper realities.
▪ Tolkien’s Poem: A specific poem by Tolkien titled “Mythopoeia“ defends the power of myth-making against scientific reductionism, arguing it connects us to profound truths.
▪ Examples: Tolkien’s Middle-earth, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia (where Aslan sings creation into being), and elaborate worlds in many fantasy novels or video games
In essence: Mythopoeia is about forging new myths to express inner realities, allowing stories to feel timeless and meaningful, much like ancient cultures did, but through individual creative effort.
His Influential Idea: Theory of Forms [5:41]
At the end of our golden thread, we find Plato. It’s Plato who influenced them (Lewis, Tolkien, Macdonald, Chesterton, Michelangelo, and many, many others). One specific idea from Plato is especially influential, his theory of forms. Now, I’ve gone into some detail on this theory in my video on the philosophy of Middle Earth. So, here I’ll just briefly explain.
So, there are two realities most people will readily accept, objects and subjects.
So, a rock, for example, is an object and I am a subject. Yes, even queens are subjects; and so, something subjective, for instance, is pain or pleasure. It’s something only a subject can experience. You can’t directly transpose that experience to anyone else which is why you call it a subjective experience.
Something objective on the other hand exists or happens regardless of any subject—a rock is an object and it would be an objective reality; if a rock toppled down a hill and crashed into someone. Regardless of what they thought about it, the rock would hit them either way and likely they’d have the subjective experience of pain at that point.
So you have subjects and objects, subjective realities and objective ones. And Plato introduced a new category, Platonic forms, which seem to act a little like both subjective and objective realities.
Morality, for example. Just about everyone seems to agree that torturing the innocent for fun is morally wrong. And that reality, should you choose to accept it, is unseen. You can’t put morals in a petri dish and measure them—so, in that sense, it seems sort of subjective. It seems to exist solely in the minds of subjects. And yet morality is also treated like it’s objectively true regardless of what any specific subject thinks.
So if we come across someone who thinks it’s morally commendable to torture the innocent, we do things like grimace at them or maybe stick them in prison because whatever they think, we all know it’s wrong to torture the innocent. We treat these moral facts like they’re objective, like they exist independently of any one subject; and morality is just one example of Plato’s thinking.
Plato postulated there’s this unseen architecture of reality we call forms. A sort of blueprint that is every bit as real as any subjective or objective reality. And all of the writers & artists we’ve reviewed today were familiar with Plato’s theory of forms and accepted it as true.▪ That’s why Tolkien talks about discovering his story.
Why Lewis talks about expressing something that’s already alive before he ever writes it down.
Why Michelangelo talks about striving after harmony with the unseen perfection. They’re all alluding to platonic forms, perhaps this comes as a surprise to you.
Well, in the words of Uncle Digory from Narnia, it’s all in Plato. All in Plato. Bless me, “What do they teach them at these schools?!” So there you go it’s Plato—he’s the ancient Teacher at the end of the thread.▪ But wait, what if we keep going? ▪ What if we ask who was Plato’s Teacher?
In one answer to that question, the purely materialist answer would be Socrates—but that’s not what I mean. Let’s take a note from Plato’s book & look for his unseen Teacher, and there’s a simple way to do that: Plato expounded at length on a term first coined by Pythagoras.
And that term is philosophy: Pho Sophia, wisdom. So a philosopher in Plato’s view is a lover and pursuer of wisdom, which is set in contrast to sophists—who think they already have wisdom, which is why they’re just called sophists with no pho.
So, a philosopher in the original sense of the word, in Plato’s sense of the word, loves wisdom or Sophia, pursues her, searches widely for her—she’s unseen. You won’t get a skin sample of Sophia, but she’s a Platonic form in herself; she’s very real and is undoubtedly worth pursuing. In fact, centuries before Plato, King Solomon wrote this in his dazzling little book of Proverbs.
Wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her.
In general, throughout Solomon’s book, wisdom is personified as a woman who wants you to pursue her, wants you to love her and desire her. And who promises if you seek her, you will find her, and that she’ll give you peace and courage and happiness and a prosperity far beyond what any wealth can offer.
But it goes deeper. Solomon also writes, “By wisdom the LORD laid the Earth’s foundations; by understanding, HE set the Heavens in place. By HIS Knowledge, the watery depths were divided and the clouds let drop the dew.
Now, think about this in light of Plato. Plato, a philosopher, a lover of wisdom who worked out there are unseen forms at the foundation of everything we see and experience. What an impressive insight that was, the same insight as Solomon’s. It’s a small wonder Lewis & Tolkien & Chesterton & Macdonald & Michelangelo and so many other brilliant world changing Artists have been so deeply influenced by this idea.
This is why mythopoetic art is viewed not merely as created but discovered—and why it’s so deeply impactful. The mythopoetic is shaped by people who love and pursue wisdom, and who let their art reflect her beauty.
Chesterton’s Outro
So from now on, you can observe stories in other art & you can dive beneath the merely materialistic structure of the art and ask yourself, “Where’s the wisdom in it? Where’s Sophia?” And if you want to craft your own deeply impactful mythopoetic art, your first step is to fall in love with wisdom and go looking for her. You can’t give other people treasures you don’t already have. Fortunately, she’s not hiding; she wants to be found, any philosopher in the classical sense of the term will tell you that.
So, I’ll conclude with the section from Chesterton that I alluded to earlier on the princess and the goblin. This is where Chesterton brilliantly expounds on why this story had such a profound impact on him—and like I said, I think this passage really nicely ties together everything we’ve talked about here today.
So, here it is: “When I say it is lifelike, what I mean is this, it describes a little princess living in a castle in the mountains—which is perpetually undermined, so to speak, by subterranean demons—who sometimes come up through the cellars. She climbs up the castle stairways to the nursery or the other rooms, but now and again the stairs do not lead to the usual landings, but to a new room she has never seen before & cannot generally find again. Here, a good great grandmother who is a sort of fairy godmother is perpetually spinning and speaking words of understanding and encouragement.
And then we’ll skip forward a little bit.
There is something not only imaginative but intimately true about the idea of the goblins being below the house and capable of besieging it from the cellars.
When the evil things besieging us do appear, they do not appear outside but inside. Anyhow, that simple image of a house that is our home, that is rightly loved as our home, but of which we hardly know the best or the worst—and must always wait for the one and watch against the other, has always remained in my mind as something singularly solid and unanswerable, and was more corroborated than corrected when I came to give a more definite name to the lady watching over us from the turret and perhaps to take a more practical view of the goblins under the floor.
Since I first read that story, some five alternate philosophies of the universe have come to our college, out of Germany, blowing through the world like the east wind. But for me that castle is still standing in the Mountains, and the light in its tower is not put out—that more definite name for the lady in the turret that Chesterton alluded to is wisdom.
Sophia, Plato’s Teacher, the Teacher of all true philosophers, of anyone who loves and pursues her—and the artists who really change you know her.
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
G.K. Chesterton cited The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald as a book that "made a difference to my whole existence". He considered it the most realistic story he had ever read, "in the exact sense of the phrase the most like life."
Chesterton explained the book influenced the way he viewed the world, describing a vision where a castle on a mountain is perpetually undermined by subterranean demons, but features a benevolent "good great-grandmother" in a hidden room offering guidance. He felt MacDonald believed people were fundamentally "princesses and goblins and good fairies" in real life, not just allegorical figures.
A Children's Book of Wonder: The Princess and the Goblin
George MacDonald’s work intrigued most of the earliest and greatest British fantasy writers | Walker Larson | February 21, 2025
“Of all the stories I have read ... it remains the most real, the most realistic, in the exact sense of the phrase the most like life,” said British writer G.K. Chesterton about “The Princess and the Goblin.” These are surprising words to describe a children’s fantasy novel, yet Chesterton, as was so often the case, saw past the surface of the work to its inner depths.
“The Princess and the Goblin,” despite its otherworldly setting and fantastical creatures, contains a certain realism: the realism of universal spiritual truths at the center of our lives. The delightful novel provides young readers (and old ones) with a well-balanced mixture of wit, wisdom, and wonder.
Chesterton wasn’t the only one inspired by George MacDonald’s writing. The Scottish writer and Christian minister is sometimes considered the father of modern fantasy. His imaginative, mystical books influenced such fantasy titans as Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. He also wrote theological works, and his novels contain traces of theological speculation.
‘The Princess and the Goblin’
His 1872 children’s novel “The Princess and the Goblin” tells the story of an 8-year-old princess, Irene, who lives in a manor house in a mountainous kingdom. Her father, the king, is often absent, sometimes at his grand palace up in the mountains, and her mother has passed away.
A race of evil goblins is hidden in tunnels and mine shafts in the mountains like ants in an anthill. They were exiled from the kingdom and want to get revenge. In the upper recesses of her house, Irene discovers a room she’s never seen before, occupied by her beautiful and mysterious great-great-grandmother, who becomes her mentor and ally in the fight against the goblins.
Irene’s other new friend and ally is a young, adventurous miner boy named Curdie. At first, Curdie struggles to believe in Irene’s mysterious great-great-grandmother, whose existence seems impossible. But over time, he begins to understand the wisdom of taking some things on faith—and that sometimes it’s necessary to believe before you can see.
The Story’s Wonder
In this illustration from a 1920 edition of "The Princess and the Goblin," the princess teams up with the young miner boy, Curdie, as she follows a magical thread only she can see. Public Domain
MacDonald’s Christian mysticism might be responsible for the sense of wonder that suffuses the book and forms one of its most striking features. As I read it, I had the sense that I was experiencing beautiful mysteries—the kind that make the heart beat a little faster, though they remain half-obscured, like a silhouette seen through a veil.
The late University of Kansas literature professor John Senior defined wonder as “the reverent fear that beauty strikes within us.” Many passages in the book describe beautiful and majestic things, such as the moon, which the great-great-grandmother somehow sets in the sky outside her attic room like a lamp. These passages inspire a reverence and longing for the mysterious and marvelous things in the world—in other words, wonder. The book helps readers see the moon as something magical, a sign and a symbol hung from the finger of a cosmic being—which, for all we know, it is.
Chesterton, too, noticed how the novel helped readers see ordinary things as extraordinary. He described one purpose of the book as “making all the ordinary staircases and doors and windows into magical things.”
A young reader can relate to the book’s descriptions of staircases and cellars. These are part of his or her experience. But when Irene goes up a familiar staircase only to find that it leads to a room she’s never seen before, containing beautiful things and a loving and beautiful grandmother who will give her important missions—then the child reader begins to see his own home as a place where adventure could be waiting around any corner.
Chesterton wrote: “That simple image of a house that is our home, that is rightly loved as our home, but of which we hardly know the best or the worst, and must always wait for the one and watch against the other, has always remained in my mind as something singularly solid and unanswerable.”
It was this aspect of the marvelous in the mundane that so impressed Chesterton when he first read the book. With the beautiful grandmother in the attic and the mischievous goblins in the cellar, the book taught him, he said, “how near both the best and the worst things are to us from the first.”
Herein lies one of the spiritual truths of the book: Much of the evil and much of the good in this world reveals itself within the ordinary orbit of our homes and the ordinary circuit of our daily activities. The battle between good and evil works itself out all around us—and within us. The fact that good and evil present themselves under various unobtrusive guises in our humdrum, day-to-day lives doesn’t make them any less powerful or important. Even the simplest things may provide huge scope for this spiritual warfare, so that no action is insignificant or meaningless.
This leads us to another theme of MacDonald’s: It isn’t our appearance or wealth or status that expresses who we really are, but our inner character and actions. MacDonald insisted that royal status had more to do with being courageous, kind, honest, and the like, than it did with bloodline.
This means that every human being has the potential to be “royalty.” Each human being has value regardless of their life’s outward circumstances. MacDonald wrote: “Every little girl is a princess, and there would be no need to say anything about it, except that she is always in danger of forgetting her rank, and behaving as if she had grown out of the mud. I have seen little princesses behave like the children of thieves and lying beggars, and that is why they need to be told they are princesses.” MacDonald aimed to remind children of their dignity and their potential to live up to the standard of a prince or princess by means of good conduct.
In spite of these moral messages, the novel never becomes a crude moral fable or obvious allegory, though it contains an allegorical underpinning. We can’t say that the great-great-grandmother is a symbol for God, though when we read about her we sense that we’ve learned something about God. We can’t say that Irene’s exile from her father’s castle is a direct allegory for humanity’s banishment from Eden or heaven, and yet this aspect of the story inspires an inexplicable yearning for “Our Father’s house” that certainly resonates with the idea that humanity is in exile. I think the quasi-allegorical nature of the tale gives it much of its mystery and power.
On top of all that, it’s just a delightful and exciting story, beautifully told. It can be enjoyed by readers young and old apart from any philosophical considerations. That’s one joy of literature: We become steeped in meaningful ideas without even realizing it since they’re transmitted through stories that both delight and instruct.
SOCRATES [a ventriloquist's dummy]: I suppose you'll be bringing Plato on next.
FLOSTRE: Malheureusement, Plato couldn't be with us tonight. He's doing panto up in Cleethorpes.
SOCRATES: What are they doing this year?
FLOSTRE: Aladdin. He gets chained up inside Aladdin's cave so he can only see shadows on the back wall. It's a sell-out. Held over for an extra week.
SOCRATES: He'll be happy there then. But it's a shame Plato isn't here, because, by coincidence, I have a few questions to ask about the Theory of Forms.
FLOSTRE: I thought it was your theory.
SOCRATES: Plato putting words in my mouth again. If you ask me, the Theory of Forms is a load of hooey.
FLOSTRE: Perhaps I can explain it on Plato's behalf.
SOCRATES: You can try I suppose. [Adopts an interrogatory attitude.] How would you characterise a Form, according to the theory?
FLOSTRE: Well, one might say that for all the things we before set up as many, we put each now under one Form, holding that there is but one form of each, and we call that "that which each is".
SOCRATES [stares for a minute]: One might, might one? But is it not the case, that the Forms exist outside of space and time?
FLOSTRE: Certainly, Socrates. For otherwise, Forms might undergo change or be perceptible to the senses.
SOCRATES: Then let us consider dancing girls.
FLOSTRE: Can't you consider something else for a change?
SOCRATES: Do you not agree that, according to the Theory of Forms, each individual dancing girl who is going to perform here tonight – or so you say – is a mere shadow of the Form of dancing girl?
FLOSTRE: That is certainly the case.
SOCRATES: And that such a Form, being a Form, must exist outside of time and space?
FLOSTRE: That must be so.
SOCRATES: Now, what is it that characterises a dancing girl? Is it not her dancing?
FLOSTRE: Certainly, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And how might you describe that dancing?
FLOSTRE: Mostly they kick up their legs in time to the music.
SOCRATES: And is not a kick a movement in space?
FLOSTRE: Of course.
SOCRATES: And is not music made up of sounds that change in time?
FLOSTRE: That is so, Socrates.
SOCRATES: So the essential nature of a dancing girl partakes of space and time.
FLOSTRE: I think I see what you are getting at here.
SOCRATES: Which is?
FLOSTRE: The Form of dancing girl cannot partake of the nature of a dancing girl.
SOCRATES: Well, if that isn't a load of hooey, I don't know what is. So, tell me, philosopher, what's happened to the dancing girls anyway?
FLOSTRE: Sacré bleu! If you must know…
SOCRATES: I must know.
FLOSTRE: They're waiting for their shoes to arrive.
At this point I'm starting to think that one of the worst forms of metaphysical reasoning is, "if I can imagine it in my head, then it must be possible in physical reality."
Friend, your brain is designed to get up to some pretty wild abstract shenanigans. Just because you can imagine something like "heat" or "light" as an abstract entity, doesn't mean it can actually exist that way in the real world. Your brain doesn't care about how physics actually works; your brain cares about processing, sorting, and recombining ideas.
(This is another reason why Plato's theory of forms is stupid - the fucker's literally mistaking his brain's abstractions for a higher form reality.)
