Discuss the Pythagoreans.
>>18649592They wuz triangles n shiet
>>18649592They were influenced by Zoroastrianism and their founder was a cult leader who thought beans had souls
>>18649592Irrational number bad>>18649602He also got circumcised by the Egyptians so that they would allow him into their temples where they discussed deep astronomical theology or something.
>>18649592It isn’t frequently discussed but Pythagoras discovered musical pitch and notation essentially.> According to the oldest recorded version[11] of the legend, Pythagoras, who lived in the 6th century BC, sought a tool to measure acoustic perceptions, similar to how geometric quantities are measured with a compass or weights with a scale. As he passed by a forge where four (according to a later version, five) craftsmen were working with hammers, he noticed that each strike produced tones of different pitch, which resulted in harmonies when paired. He was able to distinguish Octave, fifth, and fourth. Only one pair, which formed the interval between fourth and fifth (a major second), he perceived as dissonant. Excitedly, he ran into the forge to conduct experiments. There, he discovered that the difference in pitch was not dependent on the shape of the hammer, the position of the struck iron, or the force of the blow. Rather, he could associate the pitches with the weights of the hammers, which he measured precisely. He then returned home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_hammers
>>18649612That same page goes on to say that this legend is false.
>>18649626It is roughly as true or as false as anything else about Pythagoras’ life which has come down to us or anything else from antiquity really. It’s a cool story nonetheless. Music discovered by men hitting on hammers.
Pythagoreans were an Orphist sect who influenced Plato. The art of philosophy is essentially Pythagorean in nature. There's no real evidence suggesting Persian or Egyptian influence, it's just something ancient Greeks claimed to make themselves sound more legit to others
>>18649592Their Golden Verses are pretty goodBit schitzo though. Roasted by Heraclitus
they were loons and a cult. One of them was some unknown autist who realized that a2+b2=c2 and good for him Egyptians already knew the 3-4-5 rule and he induced from that
I am intruiged by the rumors that the Pythagoreans reached such a state of enlightenment that they were able to actually hear the music of the spheres, a constant cosmic humming from the planets that shaped reality.This was a big deal to the Greeks. They were very serious about how they needed to harmonize themselves in the material plane with the music of spheres in the cosmic plane. We in the West adopt this view without even realizing it
The Pythagorean school, founded in Croton in southern Italy around 530 BCE, held as its central doctrine that number is the principle of all things. Aristotle summarized the Pythagorean position in the Metaphysics:Aristotle, Metaphysics 985b-986a:"The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this study, but also having been brought up in it they thought its principles were the principles of all things. Since of these principles numbers are by nature first, and in numbers they seemed to see many resemblances to the things that exist and come into being, more than in fire and earth and water">Aristotle, Metaphysics A5, 985b23-986a3 (ed. W.D. Ross, Oxford Classical Texts, 1924); trans. Ross, adaptedThe Pythagorean insight was specific. They didn't merely say "numbers are important." They said: the same ratios that produce beautiful intervals in music also produce beautiful forms in geometry, beautiful proportions in architecture, and beautiful orbits in the heavens. The ratio 2:1 produces the octave in music and the double-circle in geometry. The ratio 3:2 produces the fifth in music and the sesquialtera proportion in architecture. The ratio 4:3 produces the fourth in music and the epitritic proportion in visual harmony. The same mathematics underlies all beauty, in every domain. The cosmos is a single harmonious composition.
>>18650134Idk, the Logos has far too many parallels to the Egyptian concept of Maat to be dismissed as coincidence. Plato’s Myth of Er is also copy and pasted from Zoroastrianism.
The most systematic ancient classification of the Pythagorean teaching was produced by Boethius in his De Institutione Musica (ca. 510 CE), which remained the standard textbook on music theory at Oxford and Cambridge until 1856. Boethius distinguished three levels of music that together comprise the total harmonic structure of reality:Musica Mundana (cosmic music): the harmony of the celestial spheres, the proportioned interplay of the elements (fire, air, water, earth), and the rhythm of the seasons. This is the music of the cosmos itself, the fundamental harmony that holds all things in their proper relationships.Musica Humana (human music): the harmony of the human being, the proportioned interplay of body, soul, and spirit. When these three are in right relationship, the person is "in tune." When they are in wrong relationship, the person is "out of tune," and the result is psychological and physical disharmony: illness, agitation, confusion, despair.Musica Instrumentalis (instrumental music): the audible music produced by human voices and instruments. This is the most accessible form of music but, in the Pythagorean understanding, the least fundamental. It is the audible echo of the inaudible harmonies above it.>Boethius, De Institutione Musica: "Music is related not only to speculation but to morality as well, for nothing is more consistent with human nature than to be soothed by sweet modes or disturbed by their opposites. Thus we can begin to understand the apt doctrine of Plato, which holds that the whole universe is united by musical concord."
Can anyone explain how Plato got the One and the Indefinite Dyad from Pythagoras? Can anyone also explain how Pythagoreanism was influenced by Orphism? I know both teach metempsychosis (like Plato) but differ in details. Orphism has a similar attitude to Hinduism with respect to reincarnation in that it is something to be escaped, while Pythagoreans saw it as a neutral aspect of the world and not something to be escaped or be saved from. Now Plato also believes in metempsychosis (reincarnation) because it made for a good epistemology about the forms. Plato posits and intermediate state between death and metempsychosis. In the Republic he characterizes through the Myth of Er that the righteous and the wicked with be reward and punished respectively before returning to new bodies. In Phaedo he says that the virtuous philosopher can escape reincarnation through theosis, while those who are more base would continue to be trapped in their bodies and trapped through cycles of reincarnation, whether into other people or into animals. Aristotle on the other hand completely rejected the doctrine of reincarnation because it is inconsistent with hylomorphism.
>>18651729>Can anyone explain how Plato got the One and the Indefinite Dyad from Pythagoras?They co-existed in rival academies, often debating and arguing philosophy between. Ideas from each side respectively probably resonated then stuck with the other, at various times. Don't they teach many of the same concepts but framed in different ways? Intellectual-overlap
>>18651406>the Logos has far too many parallels to the Egyptian concept of Maatlmao they are nothing alike
>>18651729plato never got the monad or dyad from pythagoras. the one -> intellect -> soul hypostases came from plotinus. plato's cosmology was roughly: unordered chaos + realm of forms + receptacle -> the demiurge orders the unordered chaos by looking at the forms and imprinting them on the receptacle.
>>18651729orphism never existed. there was orphic literature and some people (who perhaps could be called orphics) would read and interpret this literature, but there was never an orphic tradition in the same sense as there was a pythagorean, platonic and stoic tradition. pythagoras and plato, however, were probably inspired by (some) orphic texts.
