School of thought
Pythagoreanism
School
Classification
- Period
- c. 530-300 BCE
- Regions
- Europe (origin)
- Domains
- Metaphysics, Philosophy of Nature
Overview
Pythagoreanism developed from the community and way of life associated with Pythagoras of Samos. Early evidence links that tradition with rules of conduct, the transmigration of souls, and reverence for number, while developed accounts of mathematical cosmology belong especially to fifth-century Pythagoreans such as Philolaus. Later sources magnified Pythagoras's role, so discoveries and doctrines must not automatically be assigned to him personally.
Key ideas
- Number and Order: Fifth-century Pythagoreans, especially Philolaus, developed accounts in which limiters, unlimiteds, harmony, and number make an ordered cosmos intelligible. These developed teachings should not be read back wholesale into Pythagoras.
- Music and Ratio: The tradition connected musical concords with whole-number ratios. The earliest secure evidence for demonstrating these relations belongs to later Pythagoreans, so the discovery cannot confidently be credited to Pythagoras himself.
- Transmigration and a Way of Life: Early testimony associates Pythagoras and his followers with transmigration of souls and a disciplined communal life. The surviving evidence does not establish a detailed theory of the soul or a complete program of spiritual purification taught by Pythagoras himself.
Key figures
Pythagoras · Philolaus · Archytas · Theano
Questions engaged
- How Many Fundamental Substances?
The fifth-century Pythagoreans, above all Philolaus, held that the world is fitted together from limiters and unlimiteds by a harmony, and that number is what makes anything knowable, so that ordered structure rather than any material stuff is what is basic.
Later connections
- Eleaticism Influenced by this tradition
- Neoplatonism Influenced by this tradition
Iamblichus placed Limit and the Unlimited, the paired principles of Philolaus's Pythagoreanism, at the top of his system just below the One, and treated mathematics practised in a Pythagorean manner as a purifying ascent of the soul.
- Platonism Influenced by this tradition
References
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Pythagoras
- Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (Harvard University Press, 1972) — Pythagoras's emigration from Samos to Croton and the gathering of the community there, conventionally dated to around 530 BCE, and the start date used here
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Pythagoras, §1 — Formation: Pythagoras gathered his following at Croton in southern Italy around 530 BCE.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Philolaus, §4 'Cosmogony and Cosmology', esp. §4.2 'Astronomical System' (the first system to move the earth from the centre of the universe and make it an orbiting body)
- Philolaus, fragments B1, B2, and B6 (limiters and unlimiteds fitted together by harmony) and B4 (all things that are known have number)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Philolaus, §2.2 'Harmony' (limiters and unlimiteds could not have been ordered if a harmony had not come upon them) and §3 'Epistemology: The Role of Number'
- G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 1983), ch. 11 (Philolaus and fifth-century Pythagoreanism)
- Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism — Walter Burkert
- Philolaus of Croton — Carl Huffman