Theoretic Arithmetic of the Pythagoreans - Hardcover

Taylor, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0877282145 ISBN 13: 9780877282143

Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1975

Synopsis

The book is brand new and will be dispatched from UK.

About this title

From the Publisher

Please note the "look inside" which Amazon have attached to this book is in fact not this one but one of the many facsimile editions published now by publishers who have only scanned in the originals and then wait for order before using the "print on demand" process into very average paperback productions. This book however, is of an entirely different standard of production: it has been re-input and is typeset in a modern typeface in a sewn hardback case. Like all the books in the Thomas Taylor Series of the Prometheus Trust it has a number of added cross references and, where necessary, corrections to original typographical errors.

About the Author

Thomas Taylor (1758 - 1835), known as the English Platonist, was the first to translate into English the complete works of Plato and Aristotle. He also translated many of the later Platonists and also some of the remaining fragments of the earliest Greek writings, such as the Orphics, and the Pythagoreans. These translations, together with his original works, represent the most comprehensive survey of the philosophical thought of European antiquity.

The great advantage to Taylor translations is that he works from within the Platonic tradition, being a convinced follower of this tradition. As scholarly as many other fine translations are, they often lack the depth of Taylor's because the subtle truths embedded in Platonic writings are only understood after the profoundest meditations.

The works included in this volume display not only the extraordinary grasp of Platonic-Pythagorean teaching which Taylor possessed, but also reveals the pathway which led to this intellectual prize. Thomas Taylor's first exploration of truth in his youth and early adulthood was through mathematics: it was only when he discovered that the early Greek writers of mathematics could only be properly understood when approached through Aristotle and Plato that he turned his attention to these philosophers, and those who followed them. It is doubtful whether there has been a better placed translator of Greek philosophy in the modern age to take up the task of unfolding the significance of number within Platonism. Whether or not there truly was the exhortation at the entrance of Plato's Academy, "Let none enter here, who do not geometrise," the sentiment was most ably met in the person of Thomas Taylor.

Edition details

• Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
• Publication date: 1975
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0877282145
• ISBN 13: 9780877282143
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248