Philolaus of Croton


Book Description




Cooking Cosmos: Unraveling The Mysteries Of The Universe


Book Description

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.




Plato and Pythagoreanism


Book Description

Was Plato a Pythagorean? Plato's students and earliest critics thought so, but later scholars have been more skeptical. Plato and Pythagoreanism reconsiders this question by arguing that a specific type of Pythagorean philosophy, called "mathematical" Pythagoreanism, played a profound role in Plato's philosophy.




Archytas of Tarentum


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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.




Legacy of Parmenides


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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.







A History of Pythagoreanism


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.




Philosophy Before Socrates


Book Description

Since its publication in 1994, Richard McKirahan's Philosophy Before Socrates has become the standard sourcebook in Presocratic philosophy. It provides a wide survey of Greek science, metaphysics, and moral and political philosophy, from their roots in myth to the philosophers and Sophists of the fifth century. A comprehensive selection of fragments and testimonia, translated by the author, is presented in the context of a thorough and accessible discussion. An introductory chapter deals with the sources of Presocratic and Sophistic texts and the special problems of interpretation they present. In its second edition, this work has been updated and expanded to reflect important new discoveries and the most recent scholarship. Changes and additions have been made throughout, the most significant of which are found in the chapters on the Pythagoreans, Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles, and the new chapter on Philolaus. The translations of some passages have been revised, as have some interpretations and discussions. A new Appendix provides translations of three Hippocratic writings and the Derveni papyrus.




Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism


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.




Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans


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.