The belief in the transmigration of souls provided a basis for the Pythagorean way of life. His pupils handed these on, formed them partly into Hieroi Logoi (“Sacred Discourses”), of which different versions were current from the 4th century on, and interpreted them according to their convictions. Pythagoras appears to have taught by pregnant, cryptic akousmata (Greek: literally, “something heard”) or symbola (“symbols”). Moreover, the heterogeneousness of Pythagorean doctrines has been well documented ever since Heracleitus, a classic early 5th-century Greek philosopher who, scoffing at Pythagoras’s wide-ranging knowledge, said that it “does not teach one to have intelligence.” There probably never existed a strictly uniform system of Pythagorean philosophy and religious beliefs, even if the school did have a certain internal organization. In spite of the historical uncertainties, however, that have plagued searching scholars, the contribution of Pythagoreanism to Western culture has been significant and therefore justifies the effort, however inadequate, to depict what its teachings may have been. 348 bce) and on various discussions in authors who wrote much later-most of whom were either Aristotelians or Neoplatonists ( see below History of Pythagoreanism). The problem of describing Pythagoreanism is complicated by the fact that the surviving picture is far from complete, being based chiefly on a small number of fragments from the time before Plato ( c. Subscribe Now Major concerns and teachings Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Combining, as it does, a rationalistic theory of number with a mystic numerology and a speculative cosmology with a theory of the deeper, more enigmatic reaches of the soul, Pythagoreanism interweaves rationalism and irrationalism more inseparably than does any other movement in ancient Greek thought.
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Again, like the Ionians, they devoted themselves to astronomical and geometrical speculation. They accepted the essentially Ionian doctrines that the world is composed of opposites (wet-dry, hot-cold, and so on) and generated from something unlimited but they added the idea of the imposition of limit upon the unlimited and the sense of a musical harmony in the universe. The Pythagoreans, for example, displayed an interest in metaphysics, as did their naturalistic predecessors, though they claimed to find its key in mathematical form rather than in any substance. Yet there are also aspects of it that appear to have owed much to the more sober, “ Homeric” philosophy of the Ionians. In contrast with such Ionian naturalism, Pythagoreanism was akin to trends seen in mystery religions and emotional movements, such as Orphism, which often claimed to achieve through intoxication a spiritual insight into the divine origin and nature of the soul. These ideas include those of (1) the metaphysic of number and the conception that reality, including music and astronomy, is, at its deepest level, mathematical in nature (2) the use of philosophy as a means of spiritual purification (3) the heavenly destiny of the soul and the possibility of its rising to union with the divine (4) the appeal to certain symbols, sometimes mystical, such as the tetraktys, the golden section, and the harmony of the spheres (5) the Pythagorean theorem and (6) the demand that members of the order shall observe a strict loyalty and secrecy.īy laying stress on certain inner experiences and intuitive truths revealed only to the initiated, Pythagoreanism seems to have represented a soul-directed subjectivism alien to the mainstream of pre-Socratic Greek thought centring on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, which was preoccupied with determining what the basic cosmic substance is.
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Its fame rests, however, on some very influential ideas, not always correctly understood, that have been ascribed to it since antiquity. The character of the original Pythagoreanism is controversial, and the conglomeration of disparate features that it displayed is intrinsically confusing. Pythagoreanism, philosophical school and religious brotherhood, believed to have been founded by Pythagoras of Samos, who settled in Croton in southern Italy about 525 bce. Britannica Explains In these videos, Britannica explains a variety of topics and answers frequently asked questions.This Time in History In these videos, find out what happened this month (or any month!) in history.#WTFact Videos In #WTFact Britannica shares some of the most bizarre facts we can find.
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