Note 139 — Chapter V · FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE

As regards the mystic doctrine that numbers are, as it were, the moving principle in the cosmos—another thesis not unlikely to arise in that Babylonian world whence came the whole system of numbers for the later ancients139—we can but pronounce it a development of thought in vacuo, and look further for the source of Pythagorean influence in the moral and social code of the movement, in its science, in its pantheism,140 its contradictory dualism,141 and perhaps in its doctrine of transmigration of souls. On the side of natural science, its absurdities142 point to the fatal lack of observation which so soon stopped progress in Greek physics and biology.143 Yet in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, and the science of sound the school seems to have done good scientific work; being indeed praised by the critical Aristotle for doing special service in that way.144 It is recorded that Philolaos, the successor of Pythagoras, was the first to teach openly (about 460 B.C.) the doctrine of the motion of the earth145—which, however, as above noted, was also said to have been previously taught by Anaximandros146 (from whom some incline to derive the Pythagorean theory of numbers in general147) and by Hiketas or Iketas (or Niketas) of Syracuse.148 Ekphantos, of that city, is also credited with asserting the revolution of the earth on its axis; and he too is grouped with the Pythagoreans, though he seems to have had a pantheism of his own.149 Philolaos in particular is said to have been prosecuted for his teaching,150 which for many was a blasphemy; and it may be that this was the reason of its being specially ascribed to him, though current in the East long before his day. In the fragments ascribed to him is affirmed, in divergence from other Pythagoreans, the eternity of the earth; and in other ways he seems to have been an innovator.151 In any case, the Pythagorean conception of the earth’s motion was a speculative one, wide of the facts, and not identical with the modern doctrine, save insofar as Pythagoras—or Philolaos—had rightly conceived the earth as a sphere.152