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    Carmelics

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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Alcmaeon was not a Pythagorean

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Aristotle wrote a separate book on Alcmaeon distinct from his two books on the Pythagoreans
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    • 2.Aristotle and Theophrastus refer to Alcmaeon multiple times but never identify him as a Pythagorean
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    • 3.Aristotle's comparison of Alcmaeon to the Pythagoreans in Metaphysics I only makes sense if Alcmaeon was not himself a Pythagorean
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Alcmaeon's book opens with an epistemological distinction between divine certainty and human inference, reflecting Xenophanes rather than Pythagorean doctrine.
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    • 2.Pythagorean philosophy centers on number as the arche of all things, yet Alcmaeon never invokes number as an explanatory principle in any surviving fragment.
      ?

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    • 3.The Pythagorean community had identifiable membership criteria and practices; Alcmaeon's work shows none of the numerical mysticism or communal doctrines associated with it.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Diogenes Laertius's late attribution of Alcmaeon to Pythagorean lineage reflects a well-documented ancient tendency to absorb independent Presocratic thinkers into famous schools.
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    • 2.The single textual basis for the Pythagorean claim—a shared interest in opposites—constitutes a superficial parallel, since opposites were a widespread explanatory framework across early Greek thought.
      ?

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