The circle, we all know about but what about it have you noticed in your everyday life. I personally see it everywhere. I see it in mainly philosophy. “A wise man knows he is not wise.” ← I see that as a circle… how about you forum?
I wouldn’t necessarily say it is a circle…
If you phrase it exactly like that it is a bit cyclical. But I think the phrase generally became popular after Socrates said it about himself. But it was something along the lines of ‘I am wiser than him because I am aware that I know very little about the world’. Definitely not word for word.
But then again, Socrates then went and preached a load of stuff so it was probably just a form of rhetoric.
Also, what’s with the title?
it’s how they used to approximate pi.
Oooh. I have learnt something today.
What’s important about any circle is that it have a gap to let things in and out. There’s something about a closed circle that doesn’t seem right somehow.
Very good point. I wouldn’t want to say a circle doesn’t exist because it can be drawn. So I would say there are two circles. One that represents rotation and one that can be drawn. But like you said its the circling of in and out that isn’t right! As above so below has helped me out of many situations and still does to this day. But maybe philosophically it only leads to transcendental idealism. And using it in life more than once is a bad habit. 
True, but you don’t know what’s enough until you do more than enough. lol
A circle can’t be drawn. Not accurately anyway. Only an approximation. Our eyes could never be good enough to see a circle perfectly because a circle has infinite sides.
Anyway, that point doesn’t have much to do with the original post. I still maintain that the phrase is generally used only rhetorically, though you could explore it in an existential way if you like, which I emplore you not to because I hate that kind of guff.
Hmm. Are you saying that a circle can’t be drawn in this world under any circumstances? You might want to rethink that idea.
I’ve been learning about native and holistic ways to view numbers and circles in my reading of David Peat’s Blackfoot Physics. Sacred mathematics and geometry really appeals to me because these modalities have at heart a sense of connectedness with the flux of the world, and the sacred circle is always open at some point. Also, I see how circles can overlap and intermix, particularly if we see, as Jung did, every human psyche as a mandala. Thus, life is simply a process of drawing, carving, or shaping that mandala. I remember some Tibetan monks who came to a nearby museum to create a beautiful sand mandala. It took them about a week to create it, and I went by to watch them one afternoon. It was a transcendent experience indeed. Then, after they were finished, they took the mandala to a local waterway to immerse it and let it dissolve in the flux. This was to show the illusion of physical reality and the transcendence of all life. It was just a magnificent and sacred experience to get a glimpse into that kind of mysticism.
I agree, perfect circles are unobtainable. I suggest you rethink it 
Sure about that?
Yeah, it’s simply because by definition it has infinite sides. So basically whatever circle you present to me it would have N sides, but I can always claim it should have more.
That has nothing to do with its imperfection.
It’s the best way to try and get somebody’s head round it I think. You might be able to explain it better though…?
Ok no problem. The perfect circle is unobtainable because no matter what utensil is used there is never a method to produce perfectly smooth lines at the microscopic level. There will always be bumps, ridges, juts, which when explored at even greater magnifications will reveal what seems to be huge discrepancies of the smoothness of the line that resembles the circle to our naked eye. Mountains, ridges, deep valleys will appear all in the lines that consist of this circle, its flaws will be revealed, thus making a perfect circle impossible.
A good explnation indeed. My point still stands though alongside it though I think.
Yeah, that’s what I was wondering, whether machines could be calibrated to create perfect circles. What you say makes sense, that at the microscopic level some defects in smoothness or curvature would show up.
Thus, our perfect circles will always be imaginary thought constructs; we could even call the one perfect circle God if we were inclined that way. This is why I am partial to the symbol of the mandala for life and the psyche. Not only that, the great paradox is that psychic transformation achieves its greatest perfection in the growth and the shapes of its imperfections. In fact, the mandala doesn’t even have to just be a simple circle. See:
I’m not sure what your point is, a side within a circle is some subjective judgment of picking out a segment of the curved arc, I don’t see how that affects the perfection of the circle.