Opening On the General Science of Mathematics — Iamblichus in Plato Scroll… Continue →
Iamblichus · Claude AI
Translated from the Greek text of Nicola Festa (Leipzig, 1891). The numbers in the margin are Festa’s pages, the standard reference for this work. What the purpose of the present book is as a whole, and what the particular aims falling under it are, in how many ways and into what they are divided, and whence and from what kind of essence they derive the first causes of the inquiry appropriate to them. The purpose of the present inquiry is to set forth the common theory of the mathematical sciences: what it is as a whole, and what single cause and most senior essence it has going before it; and we shall examine whether, after the single cause, there are in some way two principles of it; and after this dichotomy we shall try to reckon up, by means of a certain scientific division, whether there is any determinate number of the genera in them; and then indeed we shall examine the common …
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