Things... are some of them continuous...which are properly and peculiarly called 'magnitudes'; others are discontinuous, in a side-by-side arrangement, and, as it were, in heaps, which are called 'multitudes,' a flock, for instance, a people, a heap, a chorus, and the like.
Wisdom, then, must be considered to be the knowledge of these two forms. Since, however, all multitude and magnitude are by their own nature of necessity infinite—for multitude starts from a definite root and never ceases increasing; and magnitude, when division beginning with a limited whole is carried on, cannot bring the dividing process to an end... and since sciences are always sciences of limited things, and never of infinites, it is accordingly evident that a science dealing with magnitude... or with multitude... could never be formulated.... A science, however, would arise to deal with something separated from each of them, with quantity, set off from multitude, and size, set off from magnitude.
Greco-Syrian mathematician (c. 60 – c. 120 AD)
, or Nicomachus of Gerasa, (Greek: Νικόμαχος; c. 60 – c. 120 CE) was an important ancient Greek mathematician best known for and Manual of Harmonics. He was born in , in the Roman province of Syria (now , ). Although a Neopythagorean who wrote about the mystical properties of numbers, Nicomachus was strongly influenced by Aristotle.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Native Name:
Νικόμαχος Γερασηνός
Alternative Names:
Nicomachus of Gerasa
From Wikidata (CC0)
To quote the words of Timaeus, in Plato, "What is that which always is, and has no birth, and what is that which is always becoming but never is? The one is apprehended by the mental processes, with reasoning, and is ever the same; the other can be guessed at by opinion in company with unreasoning sense, a thing which becomes and passes away, but never really is."
Therefore, if we crave for the goal which is worthy and fitting for man, namely happiness of life—and this is accomplished by philosophy alone and nothing else, and philosophy means... for us desire for wisdom, and wisdom the science of the truth of things... it is reasonable and most necessary to distinguish and systematize the accidental qualities of things.
Bodily, material things are... continuously involved in continuous flow and change—in imitation of the nature and peculiar quality of that eternal matter and substance which has been from the beginning... The bodiless things, however, of which we conceive in connection with or together with matter, such as qualities, quantities, configurations, largeness, smallness, equality, relations, actualities, dispositions, places, times, all those things... whereby the qualities in each body are comprehended—all these are of themselves immovable and unchangeable, but accidentally they share in and partake of the affections of the body to which they belong. Now it is with such things that 'wisdom' is particularly concerned, but accidentally also with... bodies.
The ancients, who under the leadership of Pythagoras first made science systematic, defined philosophy as the love of wisdom... [Οἱ παλαιοὶ καὶ πρώτοι μεθοδεύσαντες ἐπιστήμην κατάρξαντος Πυθαγόρου ὡρίζοντο φιλοσοφίαν εἶναι φιλίαν σοφίας...] This 'wisdom' he defined as the knowledge, or science, of the truth in real things, conceiving 'science' to be a steadfast and firm apprehension of the underlying substance. and 'real things' to be those which continue uniformly and the same in the universe and never depart even briefly from their existence; these real things would be things immaterial...