Pythagorean Plato: Prelude to the Song Itself

My book develops certain musical insights of Ernst Levy and Siegmund Levarie into Pythagoreanism in general and Plato in particular, and owes its existence to their encouragement and assistance over a period of many years. My further collaboration since 1974 with Antonio T. de Nicolás, reported in The Myth of Invariance, uncovered the musical-mathematical foundations of this material within the much older Hindu sacred writings and permitted Plato's story to be told with greater confidence and in fewer words than I had thought possible. Throughout this work Richard Sacksteder has been a wise and patient counselor on mathematics, and Malcolm Brown has contributed a fund of insights into ancient Greek philosophy. I profited greatly from comments and criticism by Robert S. Brumbaugh, Edwin Davis, Vera Lachman, Patrick Milburn, Wendell Mordy, John Rouse, Robert Sanders, Trevor J. Saunders, Harvey Wheeler, and Francis D. Wormuth, who read all or parts of various earlier versions of the manuscript. Robert Lawlor inspired the discovery of the material in Chapter 9. This final version of the book has been read in its entirety by Malcolm Brown, Siegmund Levarie, Antonio T. de Nicolás, and Richard Sacksteder and incorporates a multitude of their suggestions. Sins of commission and omission, however, must be charged solely to the author, who never found it possible to do justice to all the insights of his advisors, each of whom could add very much to the story told here. Neil Litt, my editor, has made the production of my book a pleasure.