81 - Jan Opsomer on Middle Platonism

It strikes me that there might be more continuity between the Platonic dialogues and the Middle Platonists on the monad and dyad than it might originally appear. This struck me because of the centrality of the forms of sameness and difference in The Sophist. It seems to me that there's a close relation (maybe even identity) between Plato's sameness and difference, and the Middle Platonists' monad and dyad. Multiplicity inevitably accompanies difference (as soon as you have a difference, you have two things, ie. a dyad), whereas oneness inevitably accompanies sameness (If "two" things are exactly the same in every respect, "they" are actually one thing). The indefinite potential series of the dyad, on which the monad intervenes to generate the specific numbers, could also be expressed as the indefinite range of possible difference, on which identity intervenes.

Of course, this is all speculative, but given what we know of Plato's interest in mathematics, it wouldn't surprise me if something like this was a genuine "unwritten doctrine" which really did go back to Plato himself.