Purdue News

Plato's Academy inspired unique oasis on campus Academy Park honors the quest for knowledge by Purdue faculty and the origin of that tradition in ancient Greece. Academy Park is inspired by The Academy, founded by Plato in the fourth century B.C. to carry on the intellectual tradition of his mentor, Socrates. Here Plato also taught Aristotle. The Academy was a place where ideas were exchanged and discussed, where teaching and learning and thinking were done. The traditions and intellectual discourse of ancient Greece form the foundation of Western thought, including the principles of political and intellectual freedom. At the heart of the philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle was the notion that education of citizens was imperative for the functioning of society. The words of each adorn the limestone-and-granite obelisk in Academy Park. The words on the obelisk of another Greek philosopher, Diogenes, perhaps tell best the good that faculty do and the reason Academy Park honors them: "The foundation of any state is the education of its youth." Since work was completed on Academy Park in spring 1997, it has become the open-air classroom that The Academy was so many centuries ago. On warm days, students are arrayed on the grassy slopes of the park. Professors stand above or below the class - or lounge off to the side in a way that makes it hard to tell who is teaching whom. Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; e-mail, purduenews@purdue.edu To the Purdue News and Photos Page