Pythagorean Doctrine Research Articles

New Fragments from Iamblichus' Collection of Pythagorean Doctrines

New Fragments from Iamblichus' Collection of Pythagorean Doctrines

On the "kinship" of "all nature" in Plato's Meno

Plato's seemingly casual remark at Meno 81 d I nature is akin has been interpreted in a wide variety of ways, and had varying degrees of importance ascribed to it.' Since it occupies a significant position in Plato's initial formulation of the theory of anamnesis, it is worth getting clear about. Thompson, Gulley, and Bluck concur in the suggestion it derives from Pythagorean (or some allied) doctrines. Thompson goes on to suggest Plato develops the notion further in his of the World-Soul in the Timaeus. Gulley, in a similar vein, while observing it is introduced to explain further how everything can be recalled from the remembrance of a single thing, describes the doctrine which it purportedly reflects as the view that the one spirit which pervades, like a soul, the whole universe, establishes a communion between Gods, men, and animals. However, neither Thompson nor Gulley attempt to make clear (what is not at all obvious) just how such a doctrine is supposed to function in this explanatory role. Bluck asserts Plato... is clearly thinking of a 'kinship' among all things makes possible of ideas. This conception is elaborated in the Phaedo (73 c sq.). One trouble with the suggestion the Meno's kinship is a precursor of association in the Phaedo is the character of the connection between things which can serve as reminders of each other, in the Phaedo account, is explicitly left indeterminate. It could be any real or imagined, arbitrary link, as highly personal or idiosyncratic as one pleases. Two things have the requisite just

Aristotle's Sources for Pythagorean Doctrine

IN ALL HIS WRITINGS, and in particular in the Metaphysics, Aristotle makes frequent, clear, and specific statements about Pythagorean doctrine. He makes a practice of comparing and contrasting it with Platonic doctrine. In at least three instances he alludes to a development in teachings within the Pythagorean school. We know further that he wrote preliminary monographs, of which only fragments remain, on the Pythagoreans and on Archytas. In its extent the information he gives us concerning the Pythagoreans is second only to that concerning the Platonists. The very abundance of these references raises in our minds insistent questions. Who were the Pythagoreans of whom Aristotle speaks? How did he obtain the information he possesses? Were his sources oral or written or both? How trustworthy were they? These are the questions I here propose to discuss. The further question-how reliable and consistent is his account-is a wider and a basic problem of Aristotelian method, familiar to all inquirers and subsequent to the problems discussed here. If however he is giving an account of contemporary teaching to which access is easy, then it seems a reasonable conclusion that he is interpreting for an intelligent and informed public, and that the extent to which he can willingly or unwillingly distort is limited. Any such conclusion however will remain a by-product of our inquiry.' As for Pythagoras himself, Aristotle makes two and only two references to him in the published works. The first of these is in the Rhetoric (1398b 14), the second in the Metaphysics (986a 30), in a reference probably interpolated. This silence of Aristotle's is the more remarkable because we know from the fragments (Ross, Fr. Sel. pp. 130-132) that he wrote a monograph on the Pythagoreans in which the tradition, or legend, about Pythagoras was set forth in some detail. We can only surmise that Aristotle felt this tradition to provide no trustworthy evidence

Some Renaissance Versions of the Pythagorean Tetrad

In 1538 when Sir Thomas Elyot printed his Dictionary, he included the following entry for Pythagoras: ‘An excellente Phylosopher, whose Phylosophye was in mystycalle sentences, and alsoo in the Scyence of noumbers.’ The ‘mystycalle sentences’ were the Carolina aurea and Symbola, collections of spurious precepts with hidden meanings which had received extensive explication; and ‘the Scyence of noumbers’ recalled Pythagoras’ fundamental postulate that all things have innate numerical relationships. Elyot's entry indicates concisely what facets of the Pythagorean doctrine appealed to the Renaissance and how Pythagoras could appear as the fountainhead of both mysticism and physical science. Reuchlin cited Pythagoras as source of the mystical wisdom contained in De arte cabalistica, while Copernicus in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium claimed support from the ancient Pythagoreans for his belief that the earth moved.