I’ve been reading about a maverick linguist, Meschonnic, who opposed semiotics (which I loathe) and insisted on viewing language as poetics, in particular insisting that rhythm is the most essential aspect of language. Reading further, I discovered that his conception of rhythm is pre-Platonic and more closely aligned with Heraclitus’ way of thinking. I then did a Google AI search, and what came up was damn interesting.

In short, yet another reason to despise Plato’s influence: he even ruined rhythm. What a damn honkey. 

Google AI: Pre-Platonic concept of rhythm: The pre-Platonic concept of rhuthmós (rhythm) referred to a temporary, changeable form of something in movement (from the verb rhein, meaning ‘to flow’), rather than a fixed, measurable pattern. It was an empirical and materialistic concept, as opposed to the abstract, mathematical definition later introduced by Plato.

Key aspects of the pre-Platonic concept:

• Manière de fluer (Manner of flowing): French linguist Émile Benveniste showed that rhuthmós in ancient Greece meant the “form of the moving” or a “particular way of flowing”. It described how something in flux presented itself to an observer at a given moment.
• Changeable and Impermanent: The form described was not fixed or eternal, but a transient “disposition” always subject to change.
• Materialistic: Philosophers like Democritus and Leucippus used rhuthmós to describe the shape or structure of atomic compounds, which were temporary arrangements of atoms in the void. The world was seen as a flow of matter, and rhythm was the instantaneous schema (shape/structure) of these ever-changing forms.
• Phenomenal Fitness: The term eurhythmy (good rhythm) was used by figures like Socrates (as recalled by Xenophon) in a practical sense, referring to the appropriate or good shape of an object in relation to its user (e.g., a shield that fit a specific warrior well), not an absolute or ideal beauty.
• Opposition to Platonic Ideals: Plato later reversed this meaning, defining rhythm as “order in movement” and associating it with abstract, numerical, and fixed Forms, which then largely dominated Western thought. Plato was suspicious of the wild, “demonic” power of unbridled pre-Platonic rhythms, which he associated with frenzy and loss of rationality, preferring instead measured rhythms subject to rational discourse (logos).