MATHEMATICIAN

Life
Pythagorean philosopher and mathematician whose birthplace is disputed, some holding that he was born at Tarentum and others that he was born at Croton or perhaps Heraclea. All sources agree that he was in Croton during the persecution of the Pythagoreans. When the house where the disciples of Pythagoras met was burned to the ground, Philolaus was one of the three who escaped (the others were Archippus and Lyses). According to some accounts, he went to Thebes where he founded a school. He appears to have been a successful teacher (his pupils included Cebes and Simmias, who were with Socrates during his last hours) and a physician as well as a mathematician.


Work
Philolaus wrote two books ("Bacchae" and "On setting") in Doric dialect, of which unfortunately only a few fragments have survived. These books must have been important, for otherwise Plato would not have paid the exorbitant price of 100 mnas for them. It was in fact on the basis of these works that Plato composed his "Timaeus". Philolaus used myths in his teaching, as the Pythagoreans were accustomed to do. In his theory, the world is one, and it was created from the centre outwards, that is, from a fiery central core equidistant from top and bottom. The fundamental "one" from which the universe was created he called the "estia" ("central fire"). One of the most remarkable features of his thinking is his conception of the structure of the universe, which he held to be a composite of the four elements, both bounded and infinitely immense. He adhered to the Pythagorean theory of numbers, which they held to be the only unchanging elements of matter. According to this theory everything in the world is arranged on the basis of arithmetical relations. Philolaus became celebrated for his belief in a spherical universe around which revolved the ten spheres of the Sun, Moon, Earth, the five planets, the stars and the "antichthon", or counter-earth (which he thought was invisible to man because the inhabited hemisphere lay on the side of the earth away from it) and for his theory that the Earth moved in a circular orbit.