Does this second paragraph you quoted begin to sound like Newton?
Yep. It surely does. And also of statistically-based quantum mechanics. And yet we enlightened post-moderns suppose we invented all the "good stuff" of modern science....
Speaking of quantum theory, I have the eerie feeling that Plato may have anticipated the "problems" we moderns have understanding the quantum world, and did so in the fourth century B.C.
Plato has a "creation myth": the Myth of the Demiurge. Standard dictionaries define "demiurge" as "the creator of the universe." But I'm not sure I can read Plato that way. His demiurge seems to be not God, who is totally Beyond the Cosmos (and thus utterly beyond the reach of the microcosm, Man), but an active agency of this God.
The Demiurge works to bring Chora into Form. So what is this "Chora?" And what is this "Form?" And how does the Demiurge do this?
For Plato, the idea of Chora blends two fundamental "ingredients" of the Cosmos: (1) It is infinite pure potentiality [unorganized matter, a/k/a chaos] having the basic character of uniform, atom-like matter. (2) The operations the Demiurge performs WRT Chora necessarily entail the concept of "space."
In effect, Chora is a random sea of possibilities that is ill-disposed to "become" anything. Left to itself, it has no notion of "form" anyway. But "form" is necessary as the specification of an existent being of whatever kind.
The basic ideas here are: Nothing comes into being from nothing. And unformed Chora is precisely "no-thing," so long as it resists being "persuaded" into form. In order for forms to be realized, there must be space in which they can exist. Otherwise, they remain "unrealized."
Thus Plato's idea of "space" isn't the notional "space" we humans experience with our views of a "dark and endless" night sky, bejeweled with myriads upon myraids upon myriads, etc., of lights.
Plato's concept of "space" is simply the space that it takes for a form to be realized as an actually existent part and participant of the Cosmos.
This supports the idea that space (and time) are not absolutely fixed things, but are eternally created things. In universal evolution, seemingly space "expands"; thus likely also does Time — if indeed they have been unified, as Einstein maintains.
The beautiful thing about Plato's myth is that the agency that draws Chora into form does so, not by "divine edict," but by means of persuasion (peitho). The Demiurge creates (by persuasion) in the very image of the God Beyond — who is truth and beauty and justice, and desires his creatures to be partners in his truth and beauty and justice as existential participants in his own eternal being.
Plato is certainly no determinist!!!
Anyhoot, I am wondering whether there may be insights here of relevance to quantum theorists, WRT the role/significance of "the observer"....
Thank you ever so much for writing, dear TS!