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"It is certain that the Theory of Numbers originated in the school of Pythagoras."
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Pythagoreanism"In... Aristotle... the Boundless is also... the void or empty. This identification of air and the void is a confusion... in Anaximenes... too. We find also... the other confusion... air and vapour. ...Pythagoras identified the Limit with fire, and the Boundless with darkness. We are told by Aristotle that Hippasos made Fire the first principle... Parmenides... attributes... two primary "forms," Fire and Night. ...Light and Darkness appear in the Pythagorean table of opposites under the heads of the Limit and the Unlimited respectively."
Pythagoreanism originated in the 6th century BC, based on and around the teachings and beliefs held by Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras established the first Pythagorean community in the ancient Greek colony of Croton, in modern Calabria (Italy) circa 530 BC. Early Pythagorean communities spread throughout Magna Graecia.
"It is certain that the Theory of Numbers originated in the school of Pythagoras."
"Those who dwelt in the common auditorium adopted this oath: "I swear by the discoverer of the Tetraktys, which is the spring of all our wisdom; The perennial fount and root of Nature."
"[W]e have to... interpret what Aristotle tells us in the spirit of Plato, and... consider how the doctrine... is related to the systems which had preceded it. ...[This] delicate operation... has been made... safer by recent discoveries in the early history of mathematics and medicine."
"We are told that the other book which passed under the name of Pythagoras was really by Lysis."
"Whose theory is it? It is usually supposed... Plato’s... though nowadays it is... his "early theory of ideas,"... that he modified... profoundly in later life. But there are serious difficulties in this view."
"They thought they found in numbers, more than in fire, earth, or water, many resemblances to things which are and become; thus such and such an attribute of numbers is justice, another is soul and mind, another is opportunity, and so on; and again they saw in numbers the attributes and ratios of the musical scales. Since, then, all other things seemed in their whole nature to be assimilated to numbers, while numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole of nature, they supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number."