Philolaos (in Greek Φιλόλαος / Philólaos ) was a philosopher and a Greek mathematician of fifth century BC and had as a Master Pythagore.

Biography

Philolaos was probably born with Crotona (according to Diogène Laërce), with Tarente or Heraclea. He lived in Crotona during the persecution of the Pythagoricien S. He would have been besides the only survivor of the fire of the School of Crotona. He was the pupil and the transcriber of Pythagore. After the death of its Master, strong dissensions ran in the south of the Italy. According to some, Philolaos, constrained to flee, took refuge initially in Lucanie, then with Thèbes. It turned over later to Italy where it taught with Archytas de Tarente. It is said that it was friendly of Démocrite and probably one of its Masters. Completely stripped, it determined to sell books of the school pythagorician. Plato was the purchaser. Its treaties on the Astronomie were probably known of Aristote.

Philosophy

It is necessary to believe that in fact considerations metaphysics and nonscientific pushed Philolaos to emit its theories. The origin of its writings being still discussed, one is intended in general to say that he believed that the heart was a harmony of the parts of the body and that the numbers were the key of knowledge. He affirmed inter alia one proceeds at the same time of the par and the odd one since added to an odd number, he gives an even number and vice versa. He became the principle par excellence, Completed. The even number, the Unfinished one, formed the organized world and comprising superfluity. This dissymmetry is justified theoretically by the concept of Philolaos on the harmony, thus following the ideas of Parménide. “the harmony always comes from the opposites; it is indeed the unit of a mixture of several and the doctrinaire approach of thinking separate. ”

Cosmology

Philolaos was the first thinker to affirm that the Ground was not in the center of the Universe, but that it turned in one day around a “ central Feu ”, remains of Zeus and Mère of the gods, different from the Sun and placed at the center of the Universe. It called this center “ Estia ”, according to the Greek goddess of fire and the hearth Hestia. This concept was one of the first to explain with a certain logic the apparent movement of stars around planet. The Sun, the the Moon and the five visible Planet S also turned around this central Fire. As the Earth also rotated in twenty-four hours, central Fire was thus always invisible for him. Another planet, the Anti-Ground, also turned around this center, but as it was brought closer to it, it remained also invisible in the Mediterranean world. These two stars had in fact for only raison d'être only to change the number of stars to ten, a big number for Pythagoriciens. According to Copernic, Philolaos knew already the earthmoving around the Sun. It evaluated the lunar month at 29 days and half, the lunar year at 354 days and the solar year at 365 days and half.

Work

Philolaos was the first to publish a book on the lesson of Pythagore, a treaty whose Plato was useful for the design of Timée. It presented the philosophical system of its school in its work On nature ( Peri fyseos ). Speusippe, the successor of Plato to the Académie summarized the work of Philolaos.

Mathematics

Philolaos plunged deeply in the theory of the Nombre S of Pythagore, being interested particularly in the properties inherent in the number Ten, the sum of the first four numbers and the triangular fourth Nombre, the tetractys , that it qualified the large one, the Almighty and who produces all. One took the great oath pythagorician on the tetractys crowned. The discovery of the solid regular is allotted to Pythagore and one says that Empédocle was the first to claim that there existed Four elements. Philolaos, connecting these ideas supported that the elementary nature of the bodies depended on their form. It associated the Tétraèdre with the Feu, the Octaèdre with the Air, the Icosaèdre with the Eau and the Cube with the ground. The Dodécaèdre was allotted to a Fifth element, the ether, or as of others think, the universe. This theory, though surface, showed a considerable knowledge of the Géométrie and strongly encouraged the study of sciences.

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