Is Plato still relevant today?

Plato, through the spokesperson of Socrates, makes many assumptions about the world and how it operates, both physically and metaphysically. In Phaedo, Socrates is determined to prove the immortality of the soul and his Theory of Recollection. Mixed in all of this is his discussion about Forms. While Socrates’ theories might have been applicable over two thousand years ago, are they still applicable now?

When Socrates discusses sight, for him, the eyes emit light and they observe things, something we know to be false. Similarly, we know what color consists of, it is the wavelengths in the spectrum of light, a concept unfamiliar to Socrates. Another major issue is his belief in the immortality and reincarnation of the soul. While the concept of immortality of the soul is still an on-going discussion today, there are several flaws with his belief in the reincarnation of souls as it applies to his (completely baffling) Theory of Opposites. If souls are immortal and reincarnated, then there must be an infinite minus one number of souls, or else there would be no room for population growth. However, this still seems to contradict Socrates’ Theory of Opposites, which is all about balance. If that many souls exist, then those that are currently “dead” or not in a current incarnation, would vastly outnumber the amount of “living” souls, and the imbalance would have been even greater in the time of Socrates.

Secondly, I am still not convinced by Socrates’ Theory of Recollection. If all knowledge is already there in the soul and we must simply “remember” it by asking the right questions and pursuing philosophy, there where is the room for innovation and invention? How can a society make strides in new technology, or fiction exist as a genre of literature? Unless there is a Form for imagination that is unlimited (but I’m still not entirely sure how that would work) space travel and each alien species created in the imagination would prove this theory wrong.

If all of this is true, then is Socrates' theories only valid if applied to his socio-cultural environment? Does his philosophy exist in a temporal vacuum limited to Ancient Greece? If not, then how do his concepts of the world hold up to all the knowledge and advancements in today’s society?