The Sleepwalkers (16 page)

Nobody
before
the
Pythagoreans
had
thought
that
mathematical
relations
held
the
secret
of
the
universe.
Twenty-five
centuries
later,
Europe
is
still
blessed
and
cursed
with
their
heritage.
To
non-European
civilizations,
the
idea
that
numbers
are
the
key
to
both
wisdom
and
power,
seems
never
to
have
occurred.

The
second
blow
was
the
dissolution
of
the
Brotherhood.
We
know
little
of
its
causes;
it
probably
had
something
to
do
with
the
equalitarian
principles
and
communist
practices
of
the
order,
the
emancipation
of
women,
and
its
quasi-monotheistic
doctrine
–
the
eternal
messianic
heresy.
But
persecution
remained
confined
to
the
Pythagoreans
as
an
organized
body
–
and
probably
prevented
them
from
degenerating
into
sectarian
orthodoxy.
The
Master's
principal
pupils
–
among
them
Philolaus
and
Lysis
–
who
had
gone
into
exile,
were
soon
allowed
to
return
to
Southern
Italy
and
to
resume
teaching.
A
century
later,
that
teaching
became
one
of
the
sources
of
Platonism,
and
thus
entered
the
mainstream
of
European
thought.

In
the
words
of
a
modern
scholar:
"
Pythagoras
is
the
founder
of
European
culture
in
the
Western
Mediterranean
sphere."
¹²
Plato
and
Aristotle,
Euclid
and
Archimedes,
are
landmarks
on
the
road;
but
Pythagoras
stands
at
the
point
of
departure,
where
it
is
decided
which
direction
the
road
will
take.
Before
that
decision,
the
future
orientation
of
Greco-European
civilization
was
still
undecided:
it
may
have
taken
the
direction
of
the
Chinese,
or
Indian,
or
pre-Columbian
cultures,
all
of
which
were
still
equally
unshaped
and
undecided
at
the
time
of
the
great
sixth-century
dawn.
I
do
not
mean
to
say
that
if
Confucius
and
Pythagoras
had
exchanged
their
places
of
birth,
China
would
have
beaten
us
to
the
Scientific
Revolution,
and
Europe
become
a
land
of
tea-sipping
mandarins.
The
interactions
of
climate,
race
and
spirit,
the
directional
influence
of
outstanding
individuals
on
the
course
of
History,
are
so
obscure
that
no
predictions
are
possible
even
in
reverse;
all
"if
"
statements
about
the
past
are
as
dubious
as
prophecies
of
the
future
are.
It
seems
fairly
plausible
that
if
Alexander
or
Ghengis
Khan
had
never
been
born,
some
other
individual
would
have
filled
his
place
and
executed
the
design
of
the
Hellenic
or
Mongolic
expansion;
but
the
Alexanders
of
philosophy
and
religion,
of
science
and
art,
seem
less
expendable;
their
impact
seems
less
determined
by
economic
challenges
and
social
pressures;
and
they
seem
to
have
a
much
wider
range
of
possibilities
to
influence
the
direction,
shape
and
texture
of
civilizations.
If
conquerors
be
regarded
as
the
engine-drivers
of
History,
then
the
conquerors
of
thought
are
perhaps
the
pointsmen
who,
less
conspicuous
to
the
traveller's
eye,
determine
the
direction
of
the
journey.

III THE
EARTH
ADRIFT

I
HAVE
tried
to
give
a
brief
general
description
of
Pythagorean
philosophy,
including
aspects
of
it
that
are
only
indirectly
related
to
the
subject
of
this
book.
In
the
following
sections,
some
important
schools
of
Greek
philosophy
and
science
–
Eleatics
and
Stoics,
Atomists
and
Hippocratics
–
will
hardly
be
mentioned
at
all,
until
we
arrive
at
the
next
turning
point
in
cosmology,
Plato
and
Aristotle.
The
development
of
man's
views
about
the
cosmos
cannot
be
treated
in
isolation
from
the
philosophical
background
which
coloured
these
views;
on
the
other
hand,
if
the
narrative
is
not
to
be
swallowed
up
by
the
background,
the
latter
can
only
be
sketched
in
at
certain
turning
points
of
the
tale,
where
the
general
philosophical
climate
had
a
direct
impact
on
cosmology
and
altered
its
course.
Thus,
for
instance,
the
political
views
of
Plato,
or
the
religious
convictions
of
Cardinal
Bellarmine,
profoundly
influenced
astronomical
developments
for
centuries,
and
must
accordingly
be
discussed;
whereas
men
like
Empedokles
and
Democritus,
Socrates
and
Zeno,
who
had
a
lot
to
say
about
the
stars,
but
nothing
that
is
really
relevant
to
our
subject,
must
be
passed
in
silence.

1.
Philolaus and the Central Fire

From
the
end
of
the
sixth
century
B.C.
onward,
the
idea
that
the
earth
was
a
sphere,
freely
floating
in
air,
made
steady
head-way.
Herodotus
¹
mentions
a
rumour
that
there
exist
people
far
up
in
the
north
who
sleep
six
months
of
the
year
–
which
shows
that
some
of
the
implications
of
the
earth's
roundness
(such
as
the
polar
night)
had
already
been
grasped.
The
next,
revolutionary
step
was
taken
by
a
pupil
of
Pythagoras,
Philolaus,
the
first
philosopher
to
attribute
motion
to
our
globe.
The
earth
became
air-borne.