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The Pythagoreans were an Hellenic organization of astronomers, musicians, mathematicians, and philosophers; who believed that all things are, essentially, numeric. The group strove to keep the discovery of irrational numbers a secret; and legends tell of a member being drowned, for breaching this secrecy (see Hippasus).The advent of modern mathematical science is generally believed to have begun with the Pythagoreans; although, it would be a mistake to believe that modern science was a " Greek invention". Rather, Greek history has survived in far greater detail than the histories of other ancient civilizations.
The pentagramA pentagram or pentangle is a five-pointed star. Pentagrams were used symbolically in ancient Greece and Babylonia. The Pentagram has magickal associations, and many people who practice pagan faiths wear them. Christians once commonly used the pentagram t (five-pointed star) was an important religious symbol used by the Pythagoreans. It was called "health".
1 Pythagorean cosmology
Pythagorean thought was dominated by mathematics, but it was also profoundly mystical. In the area of cosmology there is less agreement about what Pythagoras himself actually taught, but most scholars believe that the Pythagorean idea of the transmigration of the soul is too central to have been added by a later follower of Pythagoras. On the other hand it is impossible to determine the origin of the Pythagorean account of substance. It seems that the Pythagorean account begins with AnaximanderAnaximander ( 609/ 610 BC c. 547 BC, in Greek ) was the second of the physical philosophers of Ionia, a citizen of Miletus, and a companion or pupil of Thales. Little is known of his life and work. Aelian makes him the leader of the Milesian colony to Amp's account of the ultimate substance of things as "the boundless." Another of Anaximander's pupils, Anaximenes, who was a contemporary of Pythagoras, gave an account of how Anaximander's "boundless" took form, through condensation and refraction. On the other hand, the Pythagorean account says that it is through the notion of the "limit" that the "boundless" takes form.
Diogenes Laertius (about 200 BC) quotes Alexanders (about 100 BC) book Successions of Philosophers (and according to Diogenes Alexander has access to a book called The Pythagorean Memoir) in his account of how the pythagorean cosmology was constructed (Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum VIII , 24):
- The principle of all things is the monadThe word monad comes from the Greek word (from the word , which means "one", "single", "unique") and has had many meanings in different contexts: Among the Pythagoreans (followers of Pythagoras) the monad was the first thing that came into existence. or unit; arising from this monad the undefined dyad or two serves as material substratum to the monad, which is cause; from the monad and the undefined dyad spring numbers; from numbers, points; from points, lines; from lines, plane figures; from plane figures, solid figures; from solid figures, sensible bodies, the elements of which are four, fire, water, earth and air; these elements interchange and turn into one another completely, and combine to produce a universe animate, intelligent, spherical, with the earth at its centre, the earth itself too being spherical and inhabited round about. There are also antipodes, and our ‘down' is their ‘up'.
This cosmology also inspired the arabic gnosticGnosticism is a blanket term for various religions and sects most prominent in the first few centuries A. General characteristics Many elements of gnosticism are pre-Christian, and it is generally accepted that orthodox Christianity and its canonical text MonoimusMonoimus (lived somewhere between 150 210) was an arabic gnostic (arabic name: Mun'im), who was known to us only from one account in Theodoret Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium i. 18) until a lost work of anti-heretical writings Refutations of All Heresie to combine this system with monismMonism is the metaphysical position that all is of one essential essence, substance or energy. Monism is to be distinguished from dualism, which holds that ultimately there are two kinds of substance, and from pluralism, which holds that ultimately there and other things to form his own cosmology.
