Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'On Note L to Bayle's 'Rorarius'' and 'On the Cosmos (lost)'

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6 ideas

26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 4. Mathematical Nature
Everything must involve numbers, or it couldn't be thought about or known [Philolaus]
     Full Idea: Everything which is known has number, because otherwise it is impossible for anything to be the object of thought or knowledge.
     From: Philolaus (On the Cosmos (lost) [c.435 BCE], B04), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.21.7b
Harmony must pre-exist the cosmos, to bring the dissimilar sources together [Philolaus]
     Full Idea: It would have been impossible for the dissimilar and incompatible sources to have been made into an orderly universe unless harmony had been present in some form or other.
     From: Philolaus (On the Cosmos (lost) [c.435 BCE], B06), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.21.7d
There is no falsehood in harmony and number, only in irrational things [Philolaus]
     Full Idea: The nature of number and harmony admits of no falsehood; for this is unrelated to them. Falsehood and envy belong to the nature of the Unlimited and the Unintelligent and the Irrational.
     From: Philolaus (On the Cosmos (lost) [c.435 BCE], B11), quoted by (who?) - where?
Minds unconsciously count vibration beats in music, and enjoy it when they coincide [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: In music, the soul counts the beats of the vibrating object which makes the sound, and when these beats regularly coincide at short intervals, it finds them pleasing. Thus it counts without knowing it.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Note L to Bayle's 'Rorarius' [1705], [L])
     A reaction: Only a mathematician would see music this way! He is defending his account of the unconscious mind. The proposal that we unconsciously count sounds highly implausible. He needs to recognise the patterns that ground mathematics.
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 5. Infinite in Nature
Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless.
     From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 6. Early Matter Theories / d. The unlimited
Existing things, and hence the Cosmos, are a mixture of the Limited and the Unlimited [Philolaus]
     Full Idea: Since it is plain that existing things are neither wholly from the Limiting, nor wholly from the Unlimited, clearly the cosmos and its contents were fitted together from both the Limiting and the Unlimited.
     From: Philolaus (On the Cosmos (lost) [c.435 BCE], B02), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.21.7a