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Neopythagorean
Neopythagoreanism (or neo-Pythagoreanism) was a school of Hellenistic philosophy which revived Pythagorean doctrines. Neopythagoreanism was influenced by middle Platonism and in turn influenced Neoplatonism. It originated in the 1st century BC and flourished during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Eleventh Edition describes Neopythagoreanism as "a link in the chain between the old and the new" within Hellenistic philosophy. Central to Neopythagorean thought was the concept of a soul and its inherent desire for a ''unio mystica'' with the divine. The word ''Neopythagoreanism'' is a modern (19th century) term, coined as a parallel of "Neoplatonism". History In the 1st century BC Cicero's friend Nigidius Figulus made an attempt to revive Pythagorean doctrines, but the most important members of the school were Apollonius of Tyana and Moderatus of Gades in the 1st century AD. Other important Neopythagoreans include the mathematician Nicomachus of Gerasa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pythagoreanism
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 Greece, ancient Greek colony of Crotone, Kroton, in modern Calabria (Italy). Early Pythagorean communities spread throughout Magna Graecia. Pythagoras' death and disputes about his teachings led to the development of two philosophical traditions within Pythagoreanism. The ''akousmatikoi'' were superseded in the 4th century BC as a significant mendicant school of philosophy by the Cynicism (philosophy), Cynics. The ''mathēmatikoi'' philosophers were absorbed into the Platonic Academy, Platonic school in the 4th century BC. Following political instability in Magna Graecia, some Pythagorean philosophers fled to mainland Greece while others regrouped in Rhegium. By about 400 BC the majority of Pythagorean philosophers had left Italy. Pythagorean ideas exercised a m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos ( grc, Πυθαγόρας ὁ Σάμιος, Pythagóras ho Sámios, Pythagoras the Samos, Samian, or simply ; in Ionian Greek; ) was an ancient Ionians, Ionian Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the Western philosophy, West in general. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend, but he appears to have been the son of Mnesarchus, a gem-engraver on the island of Samos. Modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Crotone, Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, asceticism, ascetic lifestyle. This lifestyle entailed a number of dietary prohibitions, traditionally said to have included vegetarianism, although m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicomachus Of Gerasa
Nicomachus of Gerasa ( grc-gre, Νικόμαχος; c. 60 – c. 120 AD) was an important ancient mathematician and music theorist, best known for his works ''Introduction to Arithmetic'' and ''Manual of Harmonics'' in Greek. He was born in Gerasa, in the Roman province of Syria (now Jerash, Jordan). He was a Neopythagorean, who wrote about the mystical properties of numbers.Eric Temple Bell (1940), ''The development of mathematics'', page 83.Frank J. Swetz (2013), ''The European Mathematical Awakening'', page 17, Courier Life Little is known about the life of Nicomachus except that he was a Pythagorean who came from Gerasa.} Historians consider him a Neopythagorean based on his tendency to view numbers as having mystical properties. The age in which he lived (c. 100 AD) is only known because he mentions Thrasyllus in his ''Manual of Harmonics'', and because his ''Introduction to Arithmetic'' was apparently translated into Latin in the mid 2nd century by Apuleius.Henrietta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apollonius Of Tyana
Apollonius of Tyana ( grc, Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ Τυανεύς; c. 3 BC – c. 97 AD) was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Anatolia. He is the subject of ''Life of Apollonius of Tyana'', written by Philostratus over a century after his death. Life dates Apollonius was born into a respected and wealthy Greek household. His primary biographer, Philostratus the Elder (circa 170c. 247), places him circa 3 BCc. 97 AD, however, the Roman historian Cassius Dio (c. 155 – c. 235 AD) writes that Apollonius was in his 40s or 50s in the 90s AD, from which the scholar, Maria Dzielska gives a birth year of about 40 AD. Sources The earliest and by far the most detailed source is the ''Life of Apollonius of Tyana'', a lengthy, novelistic biography written by the sophist Philostratus at the request of empress Julia Domna. She died in 217 AD and he completed it after her death, probabl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hellenistic Philosophy
Hellenistic philosophy is a time-frame for Western philosophy and Ancient Greek philosophy corresponding to the Hellenistic period. It is purely external and encompasses disparate intellectual content. There is no single philosophical school or current that is either representative or dominating for the period. Background The classical period in Ancient Greek philosophy had begun with Socrates (c. 470–399 BC), whose student Plato had taught Aristotle, who, in turn, had tutored Alexander. The period began with the death of Alexander in 323 BC (followed by the death of Aristotle the next year in 322 BC). While the classical thinkers were mostly based in Athens, at end of the Hellenistic period philosophers relocated at Rome or Alexandria. The shift followed Rome's military victories from the middle of the second century. Sulla's capture of Athens in 87 led to destructions and the shipping of Aristotle's manuscripts to Rome. The end of the Hellenistic period does not correspond ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Numenius Of Apamea
Numenius of Apamea ( grc-gre, Νουμήνιος ὁ ἐξ Ἀπαμείας, ''Noumēnios ho ex Apameias''; la, Numenius Apamensis) was a Greek philosopher, who lived in Apamea in Syria and Rome, and flourished during the latter half of the 2nd century AD. He was a Neopythagorean and forerunner of the Neoplatonists. Philosophy Statements and fragments of his apparently very numerous works have been preserved by Origen, Theodoret, and especially by Eusebius, and from them we may learn the nature of his Platonist-Pythagorean philosophy, and its approximation to the doctrines of Plato. Numenius was a Neopythagorean, but his object was to trace the doctrines of Plato up to Pythagoras, and at the same time to show that they were not at variance with the dogmas and mysteries of the Brahmins, Jews, Magi and Egyptians. His intention was to restore the philosophy of Plato, the genuine Pythagorean and mediator between Socrates and Pythagoras in its original purity, cleared from the Ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism is a strand of Platonism, Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and Hellenistic religion, religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a chain of thinkers. But there are some ideas that are common to it. For example, the Monism, monistic idea that all of reality can be derived from a single principle, "the One". Neoplatonism began with Ammonius Saccas and his student Plotinus (c. 204/5 – 271 AD) and stretched to the 6th century AD. After Plotinus there were three distinct periods in the history of neoplatonism: the work of his student Porphyry (philosopher), Porphyry (3rd to early 4th century); that of Iamblichus (3rd to 4th century); and the period in the 5th and 6th centuries, when the Academies in Alexandria and Athens flourished. Neoplatonism had an enduring influence on the subsequent history of philosophy. In the Middle Ages, neoplatonic ideas were studied and discussed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nigidius Figulus
Publius Nigidius Figulus (c. 98 – 45 BC) was a scholar of the Late Roman Republic and one of the praetors for 58 BC. He was a friend of Cicero, to whom he gave his support at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy. Nigidius sided with the Optimates in the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompeius Magnus. Among his contemporaries, Nigidius's reputation for learning was second only to that of Varro. Even in his own time, his works were regarded as often abstruse, perhaps because of their esoteric Pythagoreanism, into which Nigidius incorporated Stoic elements. Jerome calls him ''Pythagoricus et magus'', a "Pythagorean and mage," and in the medieval and Renaissance tradition he is portrayed as a magician, diviner, or occultist. His vast works survive only in fragments preserved by other authors. Political career By 63 BC, Nigidius had been admitted to the Senate. He may have been aedile in 60 BC, when Cicero mentions that Nigidius was in a position to cite (''compellare'') a ju ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moderatus Of Gades
Moderatus of Gades ( el, Μοδερᾶτος) was a Greek philosopher of the Neopythagorean school, who lived in the 1st century AD (contemporary with Apollonius of Tyana). He wrote a great work on the doctrines of the Pythagoreans, and tried to show that the successors of Pythagoras had made no additions to the views of their founder, but had merely borrowed and altered the phraseology. He has been given an exaggerated importance by some commentators, who have regarded him as the forerunner of the Alexandrian School of philosophy. Zeller has shown that the authority on which this view is based is unsound. Moderatus is thus left as an unimportant though interesting representative of a type of thought which had almost disappeared since the 5th century BC. Stobaeus, in his ''Eclogae'', preserves a fragment of his writings; further extracts survive in the form of quotations in Porphyry's ''Life of Pythagoras'' and Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle's Physics Physics i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iamblichus
Iamblichus (; grc-gre, Ἰάμβλιχος ; Aramaic: 𐡉𐡌𐡋𐡊𐡅 ''Yamlīḵū''; ) was a Syrian neoplatonic philosopher of Arabic origin. He determined a direction later taken by neoplatonism. Iamblichus was also the biographer of the Greek mystic, philosopher, and mathematician Pythagoras. In addition to his philosophical contributions, his ''Protrepticus'' is important for the study of the sophists because it preserved about ten pages of an otherwise-unknown sophist known as the Anonymus Iamblichi. Life According to the ''Suda'' and Iamblichus' biographer, Eunapius, he was born in Chalcis in Coele Syria. The son of a wealthy, well-known family, Iamblichus was descended from the Emesene dynasty. He initially studied under Anatolius of Laodicea and later studied under Porphyry, a pupil of Plotinus (the founder of neoplatonism). Iamblichus disagreed with Porphyry about theurgy, reportedly responding to Porphyry's criticism of the practice in ''De Mysteriis Aegypt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Number Theory
Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said, "Mathematics is the queen of the sciences—and number theory is the queen of mathematics."German original: "Die Mathematik ist die Königin der Wissenschaften, und die Arithmetik ist die Königin der Mathematik." Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects made out of integers (for example, rational numbers) or defined as generalizations of the integers (for example, algebraic integers). Integers can be considered either in themselves or as solutions to equations (Diophantine geometry). Questions in number theory are often best understood through the study of Complex analysis, analytical objects (for example, the Riemann zeta function) that encode properties of the integers, primes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
