11 Facts About Nicomachus

Nicomachus of Gerasa was an Ancient Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from Gerasa, in the Roman province of Syria.

Little is known about the life of Nicomachus except that he was a Pythagorean who came from Gerasa.

Nicomachus's Manual of Harmonics was addressed to a lady of noble birth, at whose request Nicomachus wrote the book, which suggests that he was a respected scholar of some status.

Nicomachus writes extensively on numbers, especially on the significance of prime numbers and perfect numbers and argues that arithmetic is ontologically prior to the other mathematical sciences, and is their cause.

Nicomachus provided one of the earliest Greco-Roman multiplication tables; the oldest extant Greek multiplication table is found on a wax tablet dated to the 1st century AD.

Unlike many other Neopythagoreans, such as Moderatus of Gades, Nicomachus makes no attempt to distinguish between the Demiurge, who acts on the material world, and The One which serves as the supreme first principle.

Nicomachus refers to Plato quite often, and writes that philosophy can only be possible if one knows enough about mathematics.

Nicomachus describes how natural numbers and basic mathematical ideas are eternal and unchanging, and in an abstract realm.

However Introduction of Arithmetic does contain quite elementary errors which show that Nicomachus chose not to give proofs of his results because he did not in general have such proofs.

Many of the results were known by Nicomachus to be true since they appeared with proofs in Euclid's Elements, although in a geometrical formulation.

The Introduction to Arithmetic of Nicomachus was a standard textbook in Neoplatonic schools, and commentaries on it were written by Iamblichus and John Philoponus.