Pythagorean school

In the Pythagorean school, 10 was considered the perfect number. To represent the numerical intelligence of the universe, the Pythagoreans constructed a triangular arraignment of 10 dots with one at the top, two on the second layer, three on the third, and four at the base. This symbol was called the Tetractys, and the Pythagoreans considered it sacred (see Figure 2.5). The Tetractys expressed the... 

Neoplatonism This group of Western mystical philosophies emerged in the first centuries after Christ and synthesized Platonic philosophy with Hermeticism and other mystical philosophies. It also revived interest in the Pythagorean school. The first Neoplationists were the Hellenistic philosopher Plotinus (204-70) and his teacher Ammonius Saccas (third century). 

Pythagoras further discovered by meditation, or perhaps learnt from Egyptian or Indian priests, the correct disposition of the heavenly bodies and the true system of the world and this he imparted to the Greeks. But this system was too much at variance with the evidence of the senses and too opposed to popular notions for the flimsy proofs on which it rested to carry real conviction. It remained an obscure doctrine buried in the heart of the Pythagorean school, and disappeared along with it, to reappear... 

The death of Socrates is an important event in human history. It was the first crime that marked the beginning of the war between philosophy and superstition, a war which is still being waged amongst us between this same philosophy and the oppressors of humanity and in which the burning of the Pythagorean school was such a significant event. The history of this war will occupy one of the most important places in the picture that it still remains for us to trace. 

In this paper we have attempted to couple modem atomic theories with an ancient guiding principle. In particular, a parallel between atomic, nuclear and cluster shells is carried out using a fundamental concept of the Pythagorean school known as the gnomon. 

This brings us back to Balmer, the high-school mathematics teacher. By the time Balmer became interested in the problem, the spectra of many chemical elements had been studied and it was clear that each element gave rise to a unique set of spectral lines. Balmer was a devoted Pythagorean he believed that simple numbers lay behind the mysteries of nature. Thus, his interest was not directed toward spectra per se, which he knew little about, nor was it directed toward the discovery of some hidden physical mechanism inside the atom that would explain the observed spec-... 

It is instructive to note briefly the fate of quantitative explanations in the history of natural philosophy, since the valence of an element as understood in the middle of the nineteenth century could be expressed simply by a number. The concept would have delighted the Pythagoreans, for Pythagoras and Ms school had developed a conception of the universe based almost exclusively on the properties of integers. Their conception collapsed, it is said, on the rock of irrational numbers, and the Aristotelian world view became accepted dogma in the Western world. 

The Greek philosopher Pythagoras (circa 582-500 b.c.) and his students studied the regular polyhedra and introduced them into the Pythagorean cosmology as the symbols of the five elements the tetrahedron for fire, the cube for earth, the octahedron for air, the icosahedron for water, and the dodecahedron for ether (plate 7). Plato (427-347 B.c.) and the members of his school discussed the regular polyhedra with such vigor as to have caused them to be called the Platonic solids for over 2,300 years. 

His name derives from the same root, Kur, as the furnace and smithy-god. The school transmitted ancient Pythagorean wisdom to the Muslim world until at least tenth century CE when visited by the Arab writer Al-Masudi." ° The school of Thabit ibn Qurra had a major part in the preparation of the romances of the Holy Grail, which had such a profound influence on the Knights Templar. 

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