OVERVIEW

The following overview is provided as a supplement to Kenneth Guthrie's translations. The overview is excerpted from Part I of a yet unpublished work on Leonardo. It provides the reader with a more specific idea of who Pythagoras was, the influence of his thought, more precisely situating the importance of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans in both the histories of philosophy and mathematics. It also serves as an introduction to both the Golden Section and to Western Civilization's first encounter with the notion of 'infinity.'

Overview: Excerpted from The Ultimate Supper: The invention of the camera obscura and the modern mind. An alternative reading of Leonardo's Last Supper. Copyright 2003, Patrick Roussel, all rights reserved.

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