Opening Introduction to Arithmetic — Nicomachus in Plato Scroll… Continue →
Nicomachus · Claude AI
Translated from the Greek text of Richard Hoche (Leipzig, 1866). The numbers in the margin give the book, chapter and section of that edition, the standard reference for this work. The ancients, who were the first to pursue science by method, Pythagoras leading the way, defined philosophy as the love of wisdom, as the name itself indeed shows, whereas all before Pythagoras were called wise by an indiscriminate name, just as a carpenter was, and a cobbler, and a helmsman, and in general anyone skilled in some art or craft. But Pythagoras, restricting the name from all these to the science and apprehension of being, and calling wisdom in the proper sense only the knowledge of the truth that lies in this, with good reason also named the desire and pursuit of this wisdom philosophy, as being a desire for wisdom. He is more worthy of credit than those who define it otherwise, inasmuch as he …
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