Opening On Nicomachus’ Introduction to Arithmetic — Iamblichus in Plato Scroll… Continue →
Iamblichus · Claude AI
Translated from the Greek text of Ermenegildo Pistelli (Leipzig, 1894). The numbers in the margin are Pistelli’s pages, the standard reference for this work. In beginning our particular account of the mathematical sciences, distinguished as they are part by part, we begin from arithmetic; for the study that belongs to it is by nature the elder, because it deals with simpler and more primary things, and for this reason the account of it also precedes the other mathematical sciences. Now this account too is not simple but of many forms; for as many as are the genera of beings, it is divided along with them all and admits the same divisions. But before the numbers that are contemplated in other things one must contemplate number itself by itself, and starting from this we shall be able to examine also the number that is in nature, or in characters, or in the forms, or in general in all the …
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