Thinker · c. 470–385 BCE

Philolaus

Philolaus articulated a Pythagorean cosmology in which limiters and unlimiteds are harmonized, and he is associated with one of the earliest non-geocentric astronomical proposals.

Intellectual setting

He belongs to the fifth-century Pythagorean tradition whose doctrines survive largely through later philosophical and doxographical reports.

Key ideas

Limiters and unlimiteds

Things become knowable through harmony between determinate limiting principles and the indefinite.

Central fire

His reported cosmology places a central fire rather than Earth at the centre of the system.

Legacy

Philolaus made Pythagorean mathematical language important to later reconstructions of early Greek cosmology.

At a glance

Dates: c. 470–385 BCE · approximate

Places: Magna Graecia

Connections: 2 influences

Schools: Pythagoreanism

Selected works

Fragments attributed to Philolaus are disputed in scope and authenticity, so no surviving work is presented as secure.

Connections

Influenced Plato (probable influence): Plato refers to Philolaus by name and the limiters-and-unlimiteds scheme of his book stands behind parts of the Philebus and the Timaeus; the extent of the debt, and the late story that Plato bought the book, remain matters of scholarly argument.
Influenced by Pythagoras (probable influence): Philolaus is one of the three central figures of early Pythagoreanism and the first to publish a book of its cosmology; Pythagoras died some twenty years before Philolaus was born, so what reached him came through the school rather than from the man.

Sources

Philolaus , Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Philolaus of Croton , Cambridge University Press