Galileo and the Demise of Pythagoreanism

Abstract

With these lines from the Oreades (1617), Milton set in verse a passage from the climactic Myth of Er at the end of Plato’s Republic. The “Siren Harmony” is the music of the spheres, which in the Pythagorean cosmology was believed to embody the very basis of structure and order throughout all creation; this music was inaudible to the human ear, yet it was demonstrable on the basis of observation and mathematics. The influence of the Pythagorean tradition was strongly felt throughout the history of Western culture and thought, from the sixth century B.C. right through the age of Galileo, and was particularly potent within those intellectual movements which may be described as neo-Platonic, for the simple reason that Plato’s Timeaus was one of the chief sources for Medieval scholars commenting on Pythagorean lore. Throughout the reign of the Pythagorean tradition two basic elements were present which served together to prove that the nature of all things is number: the first of these was the idea of “harmony,” conceived in terms of proportion, which could be observed both in the structure of the heavens and in the relations between musical tones; and the second was the idea of “microcosm,” which enabled the philosophical scientists of the Pythagorean tradition to conclude that the presence of harmony in the heavens and in music was no mere coincidence.

“...in deep of night when drowsiness Hath lock’d up mortal sense, then listen To the celestial Siren harmony, That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, And sing to those that hold the vital shears, And turn the adamantine spindle round, On which the fate of Gods and men is wound. Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie, To lull the daughters of Necessity, And keep unsteady Nature to her law, And the low world in measur’d motion draw After the heavenly tune, which none can hear Of human mold, with gross unpurged ear.”¹