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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II PYTHAGORAS The Problem 20. Pythagoras must have been one of the world's greatest men, but he wrote nothing, and it is hard to say how much of the doctrine we know as Pythagorean is due to the founder of the society and how much is later development.1 We have met the same difficulty in the case of Thales, and we shall meet it again when we come to Sokrates. One general remark may be made about it at once. So far as we know, all great advances in human knowledge have been due to individuals rather than to the collective work of a school, and so it is better to take the risk of ascribing a little too much to the founder than to lose sight of him among a crowd of disciples. On the other hand, it is certain that some Pythagorean doctrines at least belong to a later generation, and it will be well to reserve these for a future chapter. Such a division is inevitable if we are to give an intelligible account of Pythagoreanism, but it must be remembered that it is often quite uncertain whether a particular doctrine belongs to the earlier period or to the later. 21. It is also hard to say how much of what we are told about the life of Pythagoras is trustworthy; for amass of legend gathered round his name at an early date. Sometimes he is represented as a man of science, and sometimes as a preacher of mystic doctrines, and we might be tempted to regard one or other of those characters as alone historical. It is quite possible to picture Pythagoras as a mere medicine-man, and to treat all Pythagorean science as the work of his successors. It is also possible to rationalise the story of his life and represent him mainly as a mathematician and statesman. In that case we have to regard the miraculous tales told of him as due to the Neopythagorcans of the early centuri...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217482042 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 021748204X |
| Weight | 0.84 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.58 In |
| List Price | $20.59 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 256 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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