The Table of Opposites of Pythagoras

Pythagoras

Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...

 is the oldest surviving of many such tables propounded by philosophers. Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

 is the main source of our knowledge of the Pythagorean table.

Here follows a rough translation of the Table of Opposites, although like all translations the precise meaning does not necessarily carry over from the original Greek. For example, "crooked" has connotations in English that it may lack in the original.

• finite, infinite
• odd, even
• one, many
• right, left
• rest, motion
• straight, crooked
• light, darkness
• good, evil
• square, oblong

Some sources add:

• male, female

Of these nine or ten opposites, many philosophers have seized on the third pair as one of the most profound questions in philosophy. Is the universe one? Then how is it diverse? Is the universe many? Then how is it unified? This has historically been known as the problem of the one and the many

Mereology

In philosophy and mathematical logic, mereology treats parts and the wholes they form...

, about which no small amount of ink has been spilled.

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