Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans

Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans PDF Author: Charles H. Kahn
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1603846824
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
A fascinating portrait of the Pythagorean tradition, including a substantial account of the Neo-Pythagorean revival, and ending with Johannes Kepler on the threshold of modernism.

Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans

Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans PDF Author: Charles H. Kahn
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1603846824
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
A fascinating portrait of the Pythagorean tradition, including a substantial account of the Neo-Pythagorean revival, and ending with Johannes Kepler on the threshold of modernism.

Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans

Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans PDF Author: Leonid Zhmud
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191626384
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Pythagoras (c. 570 - c. 495 BC), arguably the most influential thinker among the Presocratics, emerges in ancient tradition as a wise teacher, an outstanding mathematician, an influential politician, and as a religious and ethical reformer. He claimed to possess supernatural powers and was the kind of personality who attracted legends. In contrast to his controversial and elusive nature, the early Pythagoreans, such as the doctors Democedes and Alcmaeon, the Olympic victors Milon and Iccus, the botanist Menestor, the natural philosopher Hippon, and the mathematicians Hippasus and Theodorus, all appear in our sources as 'rational' as they can possibly be. It was this 'normality' that ensured the continued existence of Pythagoreanism as a philosophical and scientific school till c. 350 BC. This volume offers a comprehensive study of Pythagoras and the early Pythagoreans through an analysis of the many representations of the Teacher and his followers, allowing the representations to complement and critique each other. Relying predominantly on sources dating back to before 300 BC, Zhmud portrays a more historical picture of Pythagoras, of the society founded by him, and of its religion than is known from the late antique biographies. In chapters devoted to mathematical and natural sciences cultivated by the Pythagoreans and to their philosophies, a critical distinction is made between the theories of individual figures and a generalized 'all-Pythagorean teaching', which is known from Aristotle.

The Metaphysics of the Pythagorean Theorem

The Metaphysics of the Pythagorean Theorem PDF Author: Robert Hahn
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438464916
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Bringing together geometry and philosophy, this book undertakes a strikingly original study of the origins and significance of the Pythagorean theorem. Thales, whom Aristotle called the first philosopher and who was an older contemporary of Pythagoras, posited the principle of a unity from which all things come, and back into which they return upon dissolution. He held that all appearances are only alterations of this basic unity and there can be no change in the cosmos. Such an account requires some fundamental geometric figure out of which appearances are structured. Robert Hahn argues that Thales came to the conclusion that it was the right triangle: by recombination and repackaging, all alterations can be explained from that figure. This idea is central to what the discovery of the Pythagorean theorem could have meant to Thales and Pythagoras in the sixth century BCE. With more than two hundred illustrations and figures, Hahn provides a series of geometric proofs for this lost narrative, tracing it from Thales to Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans who followed, and then finally to Plato's Timaeus. Uncovering the philosophical motivation behind the discovery of the theorem, Hahn's book will enrich the study of ancient philosophy and mathematics alike.

Pythagoras

Pythagoras PDF Author: Kitty Ferguson
Publisher: Icon Books
ISBN: 9781848312319
Category : Cosmology, Ancient
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
The enthralling story of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, whose insight transformed the ancient world and still inspire the realms of science, mathematics, philosophy and the arts. Einstein said that the most incredible thing about our universe was that it was comprehensible at all. As Kitty Ferguson explains in this eye-opening new book, Pythagoras had much the same idea - but 2,500 years earlier. Though many know him only for the so-called Pythagorean theorem, in fact the pillars of our scientific tradition - the belief that the universe is rational, that there is unity to all things, and that numbers and mathematics are a powerful guide to truth about nature and the cosmos - hark back to the convictions of this legendary scholar and his ancient followers. Alongside the poignant human saga, Kitty Ferguson brilliantly evokes Pythagoras' ancient world, showing how his ideas spread in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, and chronicles the incredible influence he and his followers have had on extraordinary people - from Plato to Bertrand Russell - throughout the history of Western thought and science.

A History of Pythagoreanism

A History of Pythagoreanism PDF Author: Carl A. Huffman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139915983
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 659

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Book Description
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.

Pythagorean Women

Pythagorean Women PDF Author: Sarah B. Pomeroy
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421409569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Abbreviations -- Chronology -- Introduction -- 1 Who Were the Pythagorean Women? -- 2 Wives, Mothers, Sisters, Daughters -- 3 Who Were the Neopythagorean Women Authors? -- 4 Introduction to the Prose Writings of Neopythagorean Women -- 5 The Letters and Treatises of Neopythagorean Women in the East -- 6 The Letters and Treatises of Neopythagorean Women in the West -- 7 The Neopythagorean Women as Philosophers -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- X -- Z.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance PDF Author: Irene Caiazzo
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004499466
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
For the first time, the reader can have a synoptic view of the reception of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, East and West, in a multicultural perspective. All the major themes of Pythagoreanism are addressed, from mathematics, number philosophy and metaphysics to ethics and religious thought.

The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library PDF Author: Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie
Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
ISBN: 1609253949
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
This anthology, the largest collection of Pythagorean writings ever to appear in English, contains the four ancient biographies of Pythagoras and over 25 Pythagorean and Neopythagorean writings from the Classical and Hellenistic periods. The material of this book is indispensable for anyone who wishes to understand the real spiritual roots of Western civilization.

Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism

Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism PDF Author: Walter Burkert
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674539181
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
For this first English edition of his distinguished study of Pythagoreanism, Weisheit und Wissenschajt: Studien zu Pythagoras, Philolaos, und Platon, Walter Burkert has carefully revised text and notes, taking account of additional literature on the subject which appeared between 1962 and 1969. By a thorough critical sifting of all the available evidence, the author lays a new foundation for the understanding of ancient Pythagoreanism and in particular of the relationship within it of "lore" and "science." He shows that in the twilight zone when the Greeks were discovering the rational interpretation of the world and quantitative natural science, Pythagoras represented not the origin of the new, but the survival or revival of ancient, pre-scientific lore or wisdom, based on superhuman authority and expressed in ritual obligation.

The Pythagorean World

The Pythagorean World PDF Author: Jane McDonnell
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331940976X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
This book explores precisely how mathematics allows us to model and predict the behaviour of physical systems, to an amazing degree of accuracy. One of the oldest explanations for this is that, in some profound way, the structure of the world is mathematical. The ancient Pythagoreans stated that “everything is number”. However, while exploring the Pythagorean method, this book chooses to add a second principle of the universe: the mind. This work defends the proposition that mind and mathematical structure are the grounds of reality.