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Plato on Biological Diversity

This paper is a close reading of the last part of Plato's "Timaeus". It is argued that Plato held the views that the first generation is (functionally) asexual, and that all other species devolved from human beings.According to Plato's Timaeus, biological diversity is a result of cognitive and moral state of rational souls created by the Demiurge in the course of his production of the world. Depending of the type of cognitive and moral failure or achievement, the souls are reincarnated in the bodies of lower or higher life forms. In this presentation, Plato's theory of biological diversity is closely examined and its internal inconsistencies are pointed out.

Plato; biological diversity; reincarnation; eschatology

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