Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic

Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic PDF

Author: Philolaus

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1993-07-22

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780521415255

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This is the first comprehensive study for nearly 200 years of what remains of the writings of the Presocratic philosopher Philolaus of Croton (470-390 B.C.). Professor Huffman presents the fragments and testimonia with accompanying translations and introductory chapters and interpretive commentary. He produces further arguments for the authenticity of much that used to be neglected, and undertakes a critique of Aristotle's testimony, opening the way for a quite new reading of fifth-century Pythagoreanism in general and of Philolaus in particular.

A History of Pythagoreanism

A History of Pythagoreanism PDF

Author: Carl A. Huffman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-04-24

Total Pages: 659

ISBN-13: 1139915983

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This is a comprehensive, authoritative and innovative account of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism, one of the most enigmatic and influential philosophies in the West. In twenty-one chapters covering a timespan from the sixth century BC to the seventeenth century AD, leading scholars construct a number of different images of Pythagoras and his community, assessing current scholarship and offering new answers to central problems. Chapters are devoted to the early Pythagoreans, and the full breadth of Pythagorean thought is explored including politics, religion, music theory, science, mathematics and magic. Separate chapters consider Pythagoreanism in Plato, Aristotle, the Peripatetics and the later Academic tradition, while others describe Pythagoreanism in the historical tradition, in Rome and in the pseudo-Pythagorean writings. The three great lives of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry and Iamblichus are also discussed in detail, as is the significance of Pythagoras for the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Pythagoras, the Master

Pythagoras, the Master PDF

Author: Carol Dunn

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 9781584209492

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Pythagoras was one of the great geniuses of the West and yet, apart from his famous Pythagorean theorem, he is virtually unknown. If we rely on modern scholars and academics we find that his long-forgotten legacy is misunderstood and even distorted, and is therefore almost nonexistent. This new and provocative work from Carol Dunn (author of Plato's Dialogues: Path to Initiation) accomplishes two main objectives. First, it shows that the early pioneers of modern physics, mainly Newton and Kepler, scientifically and mathematically confirm Pythagoras' discoveries of the sixth century bc--the heliocentric theory of our cosmos and the parallel theory regarding the Harmony of the Spheres. These are discoveries for which Pythagoras has received scant recognition by the Western philosophical tradition. Second, the author argues against the proposition that the heliocentric theory was initiated not by Pythagoras but instead by his student Philolaus, who lived in the fifth century bc, and whose astronomical theory, according to Dunn, is not based on science. Pythagoras, the Master is well researched and accessible, offering readers a firm basis to reexamine the importance of Pythagoras' work and whether he or Philolaus discovered these paradigm-changing astronomical theories two thousand years before Western science rediscovered them in the seventeenth century.

Archytas of Tarentum

Archytas of Tarentum PDF

Author: Carl Huffman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-05-23

Total Pages: 704

ISBN-13: 9781139444071

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Archytas of Tarentum is one of the three most important philosophers in the Pythagorean tradition, a prominent mathematician, who gave the first solution to the famous problem of doubling the cube, an important music theorist, and the leader of a powerful Greek city-state. He is famous for sending a trireme to rescue Plato from the clutches of the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius II, in 361 BC. This 2005 study was the first extensive enquiry into Archytas' work in any language. It contains original texts, English translations and a commentary for all the fragments of his writings and for all testimonia concerning his life and work. In addition there are introductory essays on Archytas' life and writings, his philosophy, and the question of authenticity. Carl A. Huffman presents an interpretation of Archytas' significance both for the Pythagorean tradition and also for fourth-century Greek thought, including the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.

On Pythagoreanism

On Pythagoreanism PDF

Author: Gabriele Cornelli

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-10-29

Total Pages: 552

ISBN-13: 3110318504

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The purpose of the conference “On Pythagoreanism”, held in Brasilia in 2011, was to bring together leading scholars from all over the world to define the status quaestionis for the ever-increasing interest and research on Pythagoreanism in the 21st century. The papers included in this volume exemplify the variety of topics and approaches now being used to understand the polyhedral image of one of the most fascinating and long-lasting intellectual phenomena in Western history. Cornelli’s paper opens the volume by charting the course of Pythagorean studies over the past two centuries. The remaining contributions range chronologically from Pythagoras and the early Pythagoreans of the archaic period (6th-5th centuries BCE) through the classical, hellenistic and late antique periods, to the eighteenth century. Thematically they treat the connections of Pythagoreanism with Orphism and religion, with mathematics, metaphysics and epistemology and with politics and the Pythagorean way of life.

Plato and Pythagoreanism

Plato and Pythagoreanism PDF

Author: Phillip Sidney Horky

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0190465700

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Was Plato a Pythagorean? Plato's students and earliest critics thought so, but scholars since the nineteenth century have been more skeptical. With this probing study, Phillip Sidney Horky argues that a specific type of Pythagorean philosophy, called mathematical Pythagoreanism, exercised a decisive influence on fundamental aspects of Plato's philosophy. The progenitor of mathematical Pythagoreanism was the infamous Pythagorean heretic and political revolutionary Hippasus of Metapontum, a student of Pythagoras who is credited with experiments in harmonics that led to innovations in mathematics. The innovations of Hippasus and other mathematical Pythagoreans, including Empedocles of Agrigentum, Epicharmus of Syracuse, Philolaus of Croton, and Archytas of Tarentum, presented philosophers like Plato with novel ways to reconcile empirical knowledge with abstract mathematical theories. Plato and Pythagoreanism demonstrates how mathematical Pythagoreanism established many of the fundamental philosophical questions Plato dealt with in his central dialogues, including Cratylus, Phaedo, Republic, Timaeus, and Philebus. In the process, it also illuminates the historical significance of the mathematical Pythagoreans, a group whose influence on the development of philosophical and scientific methods has been obscured since late antiquity. The picture that results is one in which Plato inherits mathematical Pythagorean method only to transform it into a powerful philosophical argument about the essential relationships between the cosmos and the human being.

Cooking Cosmos: Unraveling The Mysteries Of The Universe

Cooking Cosmos: Unraveling The Mysteries Of The Universe PDF

Author: Chaudhuri Asis Kumar

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2017-01-16

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 981314579X

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Cooking Cosmos is an exciting book that traces the history of men's endeavor to understand the Universe, and answers the eternal questions: "Who made this World?" "Where did it come from?" "How and why did it begin?" Thousands of years of continual interaction with nature has brought mankind to the present stage when we have some inkling about the working of nature. We now know that the Earth, our habitat, is only one of the planets orbiting the Sun. The Sun itself is a star among billions of stars in the Universe. We know that our solar system came into existence some 4.5 billion years ago and it is but only a tiny component of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Our Universe contains some 100 billion of galaxies. We know that the Universe itself came into existence with the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago and even now galaxies are receding from each other with ever increasing speed. This book takes you through the intellectual journey of mankind, unraveling the mysteries of the Cosmos. Starting from Aristotle's Earth-centered Universe, it will take you step by step to the Copernican Sun-centered Universe, to Hubble's expanding Universe, to the Big Bang, to the currently accepted accelerating Universe. In the process, the book explores the origin of space-time, black hole, black hole radiation, dark matter, dark energy, quantum gravity, string theory, all in terms comprehensible to general audiences.

Legacy of Parmenides

Legacy of Parmenides PDF

Author: Patricia Curd

Publisher: Parmenides Publishing

Published: 2004-10-15

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1930972423

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Parmenides of Elea was the most important and influential philosopher before Plato. He rejected as impossible the scientific inquiry practiced by the earlier Presocratic philosophers and held that generation, destruction, and change are unreal and that only one thing exists. In this book, Patricia Curd argues that Parmenides sought to reform rather than to reject scientific inquiry, and she offers a more coherent account of his influence on later philosophers.The Legacy of Parmenides examines Parmenides' arguments, considering his connection to earlier Greek thought and how his account of what-is could have served as a model for later philosophers. Curd also explores the theories of his successors, including the Pluralists (Anaxagoras and Empedocles), the Atomists (Leucippus and Democritus), the later Eleatics (Zeno and Melissus), and the later Presocratics (Philolaus of Croton and Diogenes of Apollonia). She concludes with a discussion of the importance of Parmenides' work to Plato's Theory of Forms.The Legacy of Parmenides challenges traditional views of early Greek philosophy and provides new insights into the work of Parmenides.