If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?

[vulcanlogician]

When you see how much of modern science assumes Plato, he seems much less antiquated and more of a visionary.

I agree that most scientists lapse into Platonism, but I'm not sure that Platonism can be defended.  I find myself talking like a Platonist, but in reality, both science and mathematics are based on Pragmatism.

Science never reveals true forms.  We discover patterns that are useful, and create theories based on the predictive ability of those patterns.  The patterns themselves may be real, but we notice them because we find them useful.  The theories we create are never Platonically real - they are more like "stories" that happen to work a lot better than the old stories.

As much as each "story" eventually proves inaccurate, the point is, science is always replacing that story with a "more true" story. It looks for what is "eternally true" and each iteration of the story (Galilean/Newtonian/Einsteinian) is one more stepping stone, one more bit of progress toward what is eternally true. And (in that sense) science doesn't escape Platonism.

I get what you mean about pragmatism. But "pragmatism toward what end?" 

Pragmatism can't exist in a vacuum. It needs a goal to lean on. The goal of science and philosophy is discovering what is true, decipherable, intelligible. Whence comes this goal? Is this goal more achievable by pure pragmatism? Or does the search for an ultimate form (as misguided that search may be) actually aid the enterprise?

I think it does. But it's a matter worth arguing, even if I'm wrong.

edit: Not to be pedantic. I just genuinely think there's something to Plato's approach. At the very least, I want to say that the Platonic model is useful and counts as a kind of pragmatism of its own, just like math and science.