Books by Roger Sworder

There are no sacred cows for modern scientists. Ironically, modern science has itself become a sacred cow, of which we hear very little criticism. But modern science has long been denounced by some of the wisest among us: our poets. The long essay in this book considers six of the very greatest poets of the English language since the Scientific Revolution. None of them considered as science what we now call science. Nor did they regard as philosophy what we call philosophy. This essay closely examines just how deep is this chasm at the core of our culture and our values--and it does so through some of the finest poetry in our language. Evolution, automation, and philosophical Taoism are discussed elsewhere in this book."Most people will assume that to champion Romanticism against modern Science is to exalt subjectivism over objectivity, the irrational over the rational, and vagueness over precision. Robert Sworder, however, demonstrates that subjective experience--the universal existence of which is an objective fact--is simply another approach, with its own laws and methodology, to objective truth. He shows how the true representation of qualitative experience requires as high a degree of precision as an operation in mathematics, and how the laws of logic do not mysteriously become invalid as soon as they no longer have quantitative data to work upon. If the physicists could grasp the Romanticism the author writes about (and from), they would not so easily embrace metaphysical absurdity. Data without context is an assault on the human form; Roger Sworder clearly defines one of the necessary contexts without which our humanity is in peril."--Charles Upton, co-author of Shadow of the Rose: The Esoterism of the Romantic TraditionRoger Sworder graduated Master of Arts from the University of Oxford, taking his degree in the study of Classical Philosophy and History. He undertook doctoral studies at the Australian National University with a thesis on Plato's theory of knowledge. His first book, Mining, Metallurgy and the Meaning of Life, examines the consecration and, more recently, the desecration of these crafts in Western history. Other publications include Science and Religion in Ancient Greece: Homer on Immortality & Parmenides at Delphi, A Contrary History of the West, and Mathematical Plato, all published by Sophia Perennis and Angelico Press. He has also published a book of poems, Stop, Don't Read, with Connor Court Publishing. Sworder has retired as lecturer in the Department of Arts at LaTrobe University, Bendigo, where he was a member of a team which provided one of the few courses in traditional studies in the West.

Plato is the first scientist whose work we still possess. He is our first writer to interpret the natural world mathematically, and also the first theorist of mathematics in the natural sciences. As no one else before or after, he set out why we should suppose a link between nature and mathematics, a link that has never been stronger than it is today. Mathematical Plato examines how Plato organized and justified the principles, terms, and methods of our mathematical, natural science."Roger Sworder deserves our gratitude for drawing attention to the significance of mathematics in Plato's thought and writings. He lays the principal discussions out before us with clarity. He also presents Plato as a theorist of nature: of physics and not just metaphysics, to use Aristotle's distinction. Not all readers, we should admit, will be equally convinced of the usefulness of Plato's science for today, but they will all be led more deeply into Plato's vision of reality."--ANDREW DAVISON, Westcott House, Cambridge"Here is Plato for an anti-Platonic age. The author gives careful attention to some of the most important passages in the Platonic dialogues and offers new solutions to some of Plato's most famous mathematical puzzles. He then considers the implications of these penetrating studies for the philosophy of science, and the natural sciences especially. This is a book that revivifies the core themes of Platonism and restores science to worship. It shows Roger Sworder to be one of the foremost students of Plato writing today, and places him in the noble tradition of Thomas Taylor."--RODNEY BLACKHIRST, author of Primordial Alchemy and Modern Religion: Essays on Traditional Cosmology