Richard Seaford asserts that monetary currency necessitates an antithesis of sign and substance, whereby the sign becomes decisive, and implies an ideal substance underlying the tangible reality.103 It is interesting that, much as Skoyles had seen the alphabet as the prime mover in a new way of thinking, Seaford sees money as being the prime mover of a new kind of philosophy, and one can certainly understand why, given that this formulation of Seaford’s bears an uncanny resemblance to Plato’s theory of Forms.
