Note 39 — Chapter I · SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY IN GREECE, BEFORE AND IN THE TIME OF SOKRATES.

Aristot. de Cœlo, ii. 13. Respecting this Pythagorean cosmical system, the elucidations of Boeckh are clear and valuable. Untersuchungen über das Kosmische System des Platon, Berlin, 1852, p. 99-102; completing those which he had before given in his edition of the fragments of Philolaus.

Martin (in his Études sur le Timée de Platon, vol. ii. p. 107) and Gruppe (Die Kosmischen Systeme der Griechen, ch. iv.) maintain that the original system proposed by Pythagoras was a geocentric system, afterwards transformed by Philolaus and other Pythagoreans into that which stands in the text. But I agree with Boeckh (Ueber das Kosmische System des Platon, p. 89 seqq.), and with Zeller (Phil. d. Griech., vol. i. p. 308, ed. 2), that this point is not made out. That which Martin and Gruppe (on the authority of Alexander Polyhistor, Diog. viii. 25, and others) consider to be a description of the original Pythagorean system as it stood before Philolaus, is more probably a subsequent transformation of it; introduced after the time of Aristotle, in order to suit later astronomical views.