From Pious to Polite: Pythagoras in the Res publica litterarum of French Renaissance Mathematics

Richard Oosterhoff

DOI:10.1353/jhi.2013.0039

Corpus ID: 170303475

From Pious to Polite: Pythagoras in the Res publica litterarum of French Renaissance Mathematics

@article{Oosterhoff2013FromPT,
  title={From Pious to Polite: Pythagoras in the Res publica litterarum of French Renaissance Mathematics},
  author={Richard Oosterhoff},
  journal={Journal of the History of Ideas},
  year={2013},
  volume={74},
  pages={531 - 552}
}

Richard Oosterhoff

Published 2013

Philosophy

Journal of the History of Ideas

Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, Pythagoras became a purveyor of polite secrets. To the Florentine Neoplatonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino, Pythagoras was a prophet or priest whose cryptic sayings might allow a glimpse into cosmic mysteries. By the 1650s one was as likely to find Pythagoras adorning a treatise on the theory of disciplines like swordsmanship and dancing. Numbers had come down to earth. This paper charts the first, crucial part of this inversion in meanings and… CONTINUE READING

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