Besim Karakadılar

A Peirce specialist told one twentieth-century philosopher that many things in his philosophy and Peirce's ideas were so similar that it almost made him believe in reincarnation. The philosopher's reply was: “Yes, but who incarnated who?” One can say that Socrates is mortal and his questions are forgotten. But isn't he the guy in Plato's dialogues? What does Plato say about his environment and his questions? Does he talk about Socrates the man or his questions? Or is it really both? Or is it rather our own questions that Plato wrote about? Who else could have incarnated who? Euclid lived in Alexandria. All we know about him is that he wrote the Elements. But couldn't Meno's slave boy also have written the Elements? If only he could become a mathematician in a research institute like the Museum...