Plato was the first information philosopher. His theory of forms is the starting point for the concept and even the philosophical language of information, including the name and the idea of idea (ιδέα), derived from the word for form (εἴδος).
For Plato, the forms are prior to any instance of an object with a given form. The forms exist in another "realm" that is more "real" than the everyday physical world of material objects. The forms are properly outside of time, like
Immanuel Kant's noumenal world.
Thus Plato set up the
fundamental dualism of philosophy, the distinction between idealism and materialism, between abstract eternal essences and concrete ephemeral existences, between Parmenidean
Being and Heraclitean
Becoming
In Timaeus 27d, Plato asked "What is Being always, but has no Becoming (origin or genesis), and what is Becoming always, and never Being?"
τί τὸ ὂν ἀεί͵ γένεσιν δὲ οὐκ ἔχον͵ καὶ τί τὸ γιγνόμενον μὲν ἀεί͵ ὂν δὲ οὐδέποτε;
Plato thinks that
