This is a comprehensive, authoritative and innovative account of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism, one of the most enigmatic and influential philosophies in the West. In twenty-one chapters covering a timespan from the sixth century BC to the seventeenth century AD, leading scholars construct a number of different images of Pythagoras and his community, assessing current scholarship and offering new answers to central problems.
The book you are holding is the work of Thomas Stanley (1625-1678), as published in 1687. It consists of the long section he devoted to Pythagoras in his masterful and massive tome The History of Philosophy. The timeless brilliance of Stanley's work is that it presented a survey of the classical writers of antiquity that remains as contemporary today as it was over three hundred years ago.
Pythagoras and his cousins want to win a music contest, but first they must figure out how to play their instruments in tune, something that's never been done before. While trying to fix the problem, Pythagoras makes an important discovery--notes that sound pleasant together have a certain mathematical relationship. When Pythagoras applies this ratio to his cousins' pipes and lyres, the result is music to the ears.
This wide-ranging introduction to the study of philosophy in the ancient world surveys the period's developments and evaluates a comprehensive series of major thinkers, ranging from Pythagoras to Epicurus.
