The Theory of Realms

Theories: They come and go, where some hold and others crumble as soon as spoken. But they are all there, and all made sense at some point. Plato is an interesting guy who developed the theory of realms - an interesting concept of how our world works today. In his theory, there are two realms: The Realm of the Forms (Being), and The Realm of the Physical (Becoming). 

In the Realm of the Forms, everything is perfect - this is not on earth, but rather a celestial plane (like a heaven like existence). In that Realm, there is the perfect form of everything: the perfect book, phone, chair, tree, and even drop of water. You can think of it as the perfect Google Image search - whatever you type in to the search engine, you will get the perfect (ideal) image of that item.

The Realm of the Physical is our earth, and the things that reside on/in it. Nothing is perfect on this Earth, and everything ranges in many different appearances (a redwood and an oak are both trees, but they don't look the same). And here's where the realms connect - we know what something is (what a tree is for example) because there is a perfect copy in the Realm of the Forms. We can see that, and therefore we know what it is.

I'm not saying this Theory makes a ton of sense (well, back then it did), but it is an interesting concept at the least - we know what something is because there is the "perfect" or "ideal thing" out there for everything. It would be interesting to be able to go back to when this Theory was proposed, see the way people reacted, and understand the different eras easier. Unfortunately, we don't have the Time Machine yet - however there are some good Deloreans out there!