Free Republic

Ptolemy's Geography, America and Columbus: Ancient Greeks and why maybe America was discovered Michael Lahanas Aristotle: “there is a continuity between the parts about the pillars of Hercules and the parts about India, and that in this way the ocean is one.” [As] for the rest of the distance around the inhabited earth which has not been visited by us up to the present time (because of the fact that the navigators who sailed in opposite directions never met), it is not of very great extent, if we reckon from the parallel distances that have been traversed by us... For...

We can forget all the ideas crediting Atlanteans or space aliens with building the Great Pyramid of Giza, and instead imagine ourselves travelling back in time in H G Wells's time machine to try and work out not how the ancient Egyptians built this enormous edifice, because this lies beyond our present understanding, but rather what we can best judge to be its most appropriate proportions. Then, however, there were no electronic calculators, only ropes and rods. Constructing right angles at the four corners of a pyramid is easy. To do it, history tells us that the Egyptians were aware...

From the idea that our universe is one among many, to the revelation that mathematician Pythagoras didn't actually invent the Pythagorean theorem, here are eight shocking things we learned from reading physicist Stephen Hawking's new book, "The Grand Design," written with fellow physicist Leonard Mlodinow of Caltech. This book, covering major questions about the nature and origin of the universe, was released Sept. 7 by its publisher, Bantam. 1. The past is possibility According to Hawking and Mlodinow, one consequence of the theory of quantum mechanics is that events in the past that were not directly observed did not happen...

The “Cartesian Split” Is a Hallucination; Ergo, We Should Get Rid of It by Jean F. Drew The Ancient Heritage of Western Science The history of science goes back at least two and a half millennia, to the pre-Socratics of ancient Greece. Democritus and Leucippus were the fathers of atomic theory — at least they were the first thinkers ever to formulate one. Heraclitus was the first thinker to consider what in the modern age developed as the laws of thermodynamics. Likewise Plato’s Chora, in the myth of the Demiurge (see Timaeus), may have been the very first anticipation of...

What Is a Cosmos? The Greek Idea of Cosmos and its Contemporary Meaning By David Fideler The Greek word cosmos cannot be translated into a single English word, but refers to an equal presence of order and beauty. When the Greek philosopher Pythagoras first called the universe a cosmos, he did so because it is a living embodiment of nature’s order, beauty, and harmony. The fact that the physical world embodies beauty and harmony can be demonstrated in many ways, but rational proof is only required when we have forgotten our own connection with the underlying fabric of life. When...

     A Scoundrel's Pythagorean Imperative Mia T, 12.14.03 z = distance between flag lapel pin and chin d = distance between midpoint of chin and jowl y = distance between the midpoint of chin and top button x = distance between top button and flag lapel pin    by Mia T, December 7, 2003   issus clinton failed to notice: 'living history' begets a certain symmetry. How fitting it is that the clintons were forced to reveal their inept and treasonous hand on this day, exactly 62 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. One has to surmise...

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES, OR THE METAPHYSICS OF MUSIC . . . According to tradition, the harmonic structure of music was discovered by Pythagoras about the fifth century B.C. Pythagoras experimented with a stretched piece of cord. When plucked, the cord sounded a certain note. When halved in length and plucked again, the cord sounded a higher note completely consonant with the first. In fact, it was the same note at a higher pitch. Pythagoras had discovered the ration 2:1, of the octave. Further experiments, plucking the strings two-thirds of its original length produced a perfect fifth in the...