“Platos” many and varied

This chapter reflects on Platonism’s longstanding influence over European thought by showing how the Platonist tradition can be divided into a series of different “Platos,” given that the issues that led generations of European thinkers back to Plato were always changing. In this respect, the Cambridge Platonists and their work in the seventeenth century are the model, and their effect on the rise of physics is the chief example. Among other thinkers considered are Jacob Arminius (1560–1609), Isaac Barrow (1630–1677), Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), Henry More (1614–1687), and Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677).