A.L. Kroeber. "Psychosis or Social Sanction," in A.L. Kroeber, The Nature of Culture. Chicago

The source of the directive to know oneself is that master of wisdom who keeps cropping up whenever we nose around in ancient Greece

Chris Bader, Alfred Demaris. "A test of the Stark-Bainbridge theory of affiliation with religious cults and sects." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, September 1996

Zeno popped up in Athens in 450 b.c. Will Durant. The Story of Civilization

Aristotle. Rhetoric. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

The third century Greek historian of philosophy Diogenes Laertius disagreed with Aristotle and proclaimed that it was not Zeno, but the king of the Sophists, Protagoras, who was "the first to invent that sort of argument which is called Socratic." (Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Translated by R.D. Hicks. [1925] Cambridge, MA, 1972.),

Despite the trivialization of their role in the narratives of modern historians, Pythagoreans and their ideas saturated Athens in the fourth and third century b.c. Plato's dialogs tell us several of them were friends of Socrates. Among these were Simmias and Cebes, who appear in the Phaedo, and Timaeus, whom Diodorus numbers as one of "the last of the" great Pythagoreans. (Diodorus. Historical Library. Gregory R. Crane, editor, The Perseus Project,, August, 1998.) Others in Diodorus' list include

The Sophists have been given a bum rap by history, largely due to Plato, who was jockeying with them for influence. Sophists were among Plato's favorite bad guys in his write-ups of the Socratic dialogs. He went so far as to call them intellectual "prostitutes." (Xenophon. Memorabilia. Gregory R. Crane, editor, The Perseus Project, August, 1998.) However the great Sophists - of whom there were many - were walking universities. They taught a full curriculum of fields from science, literature, and philosophy, to government, diplomacy, and, of course, oratory. Here's how Protagoras, a superstar Sophist whose visits to Athens sent the town into a pop-star-style tizzy and whose ideas made substantial contributions to Western thought, sums up the Sophist curriculum and his variation on it

The term "Sophist" came from the Greek "sophia" - meaning skill, wisdom, or knowledge. (Diodorus. Historical Library). Plutarch was a bit more cynical in his definition. His take

The Sophists' opponents made much of their high fees. However another bit of pricing information which was less publicized

For more on the use of belief systems to turn the hierarchical ladder upside down, see Howard Bloom. The Lucifer Principle

Lewis Thomas and Robin Bates "Notes of a Biology Watcher." Produced and directed by Robin Bates. Nova program #818, tv script. Boston

Eric Jantsch. The Self Organizing Universe

Rodolfo Llinás. "'Mindfulness' as a Functional State of the Brain. In Mindwaves

G.W. Barlow, R.C. Francis. "Unmasking affiliative behavior among juvenile Midas cichlids (Cichlasoma citrinellum)." Journal of Comparative Psychology, June 1988

Michael Patrick Ghiglieri. The Chimpanzees of Kibale Forest

E.O. Laumann. "Friends of Urban Men

Robert B. Cialdini. Influence

Robert B. Cialdini. Influence

G.W. Evans and R.B. Howard. "Personal Space." Psychological Bulletin, October, 1973

K.R. Truett, L.J. Eaves, J.M. Meyer, A.C. Heath, M.G. Martin. "Religion and education as mediators of attitudes

An extremely interesting study has shown that many of the attitudes on which folks gang together have a genetic basis. In other words, to some extent, outlooks are markers for gene-based rational predispositions. (J.P. Rushton, C.H. Littlefield, C.J. Lumsden. "Gene-culture coevolution of complex social behavior

Stanley Schachter. The Psychology of Affiliation. Stanford CA

Harry F. Harlow. Learning To Love. New York

Harry F. Harlow. Learning to Love

C.R. Cloninger, J. Rice, T. Reich. "Multifactorial inheritance with cultural transmission and assortative mating. II. a general model of combined polygenic and cultural inheritance." American Journal of Human Genetics, March 1979

T.A. Rizzo, W.A. Corsaro. "Social support processes in early childhood friendship

We do more than passively lose hope - an approach which by itself is biologically crippling. Research indicates we slip into actual self-punishment. (For self punishment, see

Jerome Bruner. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA

T.M. Newcomb. "Stabilities underlying changes in interpersonal attraction." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66, 1963

Howard Bloom. The Lucifer Principle

M.R. Gunnar, K. Tout, M. de Haan, S. Pierce, K. Stansbury. "Temperament, social competence, and adrenocortical activity in preschoolers." Developmental Psychobiology, July 1997

A.W. Harrist, A.F. Zaia, J.E. Bates, K.A. Dodge, G.S. Pettit. "Subtypes of social withdrawal in early childhood

Thomas J. Young. "Judged political extroversion-introversion and perceived competence of U.S. Presidents." Perceptual & Motor Skills, October 1996

J.D. Higley, S.T. King ST Jr, M.F. Hasert, M. Champoux, S.J. Suomi, M. Linnoila. "Stability of interindividual differences in serotonin function and its relationship to severe aggression and competent social behavior in rhesus macaque females." Neuropsychopharmacology, January 1996

A.L. Clair, T.P. Oei, L. Evans. "Personality and treatment response in agoraphobia with panic attacks." Comprehensive Psychiatry, September-October 1992

Forgive me, oh ye gods of science, for I have extrapolated from work done with crayfish, who share our hormones of inclusion, social expulsion, confidence, and "emotional" paralysis. The findings of A.L. Clair, T.P. Oei, L. Evans in their study of human "Personality and treatment response in agoraphobia with panic attacks" tends to support the hormonal and behavioral continuity between crawdads and humans strongly, as do numerous examples from history. For the crayfish case, see

Valerius Geist, a specialist in large mammalian evolution, including that of humans, calls this approach the "flip." (Valerius Geist. Life Strategies, Human Evolution, Environmental Design

Yvonne Walsh, Robert Bor. "Psychological consequences of involvement in a new religious movement or cult." Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 9(1), 1996

Jeff B. Bryson and Michael J. Driver. "Cognitive complexity, introversion, and preference for complexity." Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, September 1972

Joel Cooper, Charles J. Scalise. "Dissonance produced by deviations from life styles

Some introverts lock the unfamiliar safely into judgmental boxes, avoid the fuzziness of intuition, and show a strong tendency to anchor themselves within the crowd perception. In technical terms, ISFJs on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tend to be field-dependent. Others use their intuition and look at oddities for what they're worth. These are INFPs (introverted, intuitive, thinking, perceiving) on the Myers-Briggs. Perceiving in these terms is the alternative to "judgmental." So it tends to mean accepting differences in others and in events rather than clamping them into decisive categories. INFPs tend to be field-independent, meaning they form their own perceptions rather than cleaving to conclusions handed to them by others. (C.P. Schmidt, J.W. McCutcheon. "Reexamination of relations between the Myers-Briggs type indicator and field dependence-independence." Perceptual and Motor Skills, December 1988

Tests done with the Strong Interest Inventory tend to indicate that high IQ introverts are explorers. A.S. Kaufman, S.E. McLean. "An investigation into the relationship between interests and intelligence." Journal of Clinical Psychology. 54(2), 1998

For a synthesis of additional research on the solitary, stress-tinged ontogenetic origins of genius, see

Nietzche declared that these climbs from the valley of the ordinary led to the mountain-peak-dances of the ubermenschen, the exuberant visions achieved by those liberated from the narrowness of conformity. (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Also Sprach Zarathustra. Translated by Thomas Common. New York

H.J. Eysenck. "Primary Mental Abilities." British Journal of Educational Psychology, 9, 1939

Hans J. Eysenck, Michael W. Eysenck. Personality and Individual Differences

Hans J. Eysenck, Michael W. Eysenck. Personality and Individual Differences

Jeff B. Bryson and Michael J. Driver. "Cognitive complexity, introversion, and preference for complexity." Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, September 1972

Richang Zheng, Yijun Qiu. "A study of the personality trend of the players in the Chinese first-rate women's volleyball teams." Information on Psychological Sciences, 3, 1984

Hans J. Eysenck, Michael W. Eysenck. Personality and Individual Differences

Hans J. Eysenck, Michael W. Eysenck. Personality and Individual Differences

M.M. Marinkovic. "Importance of introversion for science and creativity." Analytische Psychologie, Vol 12(1), 1981

Among other things, introverts seem to process information in a manner all their own and are slow to knuckle under to the collective perception of the mainstream. Extroverts, on the other hand, are quicker to see things in the "normal" way. (Michael W. Eysenck; Christine Eysenck. "Memory scanning, introversion^extraversion, and levels of processing." Journal of Research in Personality, September, 13(3)

Hakan Fischer, Gustav Wik, Mats Fredrikson. "Extraversion, neuroticism and brain function

Sally J. Power, et. al. have concluded that extroverts are left-brain oriented. They quote Ned Herrmann, inventor of the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument, who states that "a preference for the left cognitive style represents a positive predisposition for order, organization, and following the rules." (Sally J. Power, Lorman L. Lundsten. "Studies that compare type theory and left-brain/right-brain theory." Journal of Psychological Type, 43, 1997

Darren R. Gitelman, Nathaniel M. Alpert, Stephen Kosslyn, Kirk Daffner. "Functional imaging of human right hemispheric activation for exploratory movements." Annals of Neurology, February 1996

John R. Skoyles"Alphabet and the Western mind." Nature, 309, 1984

The socially and verbally oriented left cortex of the brain is able to inhibit the motor areas of the right cortex by taking control of the communication lines which connect the two. (J. Netz, U. Ziemann, V. Hömberg. "Hemispheric asymmetry of transcallosal inhibition in man." Experimental Brain Research, 104

.C. Borod. "Interhemispheric and intrahemispheric control of emotion

A. Bechara, H. Damasio, D. Tranel, A.R. Damasio. "Deciding advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy." Science 1997, Feb 28

Sonia Ancoli, Kenneth F. Green. "Authoritarianism, introspection, and alpha wave biofeedback training." Psychophysiology, January 1977

Sonia Ancoli, Kenneth F. Green. "Authoritarianism, introspection, and alpha wave biofeedback training."

A paraphrase of the Kipling poem "If." Rudyard may fairly be counted among the Faustian introverts. He began as a pudgy, unathletic little fellow picked on by everyone in sight, including the children of the woman to whom he'd been sent in England for raising while he attended a proper school instead of remaining among the heathens his parents were herding like cattle back in India. In full adulthood, Kipling galvanized England during preceding World War I with heroic visions wrenched from the solitary adventures of his teens. (Frederick Winston Furneaux Smith, Earl of Birkenhead. Rudyard Kipling. New York

Hans J. Eysenck, Michael W. Eysenck. Personality and Individual Differences

Psychologist Dean Keith Simonton has examined the many factors behind monumental achievement in Greatness

Jerome Kagan. Unstable Ideas

Diogenes Laertius. "The Life of Pythagoras." In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

Oswyn Murray. "Life and Society in Classical Greece." In The Oxford History of the Classical World

Pythagoras was "a youth devoted to learning," as Diogenes Laertius put it. (Diogenes Laertius. "The Life of Pythagoras." In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

When it came to digesting intellectual complexities, says Iamblichus, the Samians "lacked endurance." Iamblichus. The Life of Pythagoras or On the Pythagorean Life. In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler

Iamblichus. The Life of Pythagoras or On the Pythagorean Life. In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Richard Crawley. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

Iamblichus. The Life of Pythagoras or On the Pythagorean Life. In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

Iamblichus. The Life of Pythagoras or On the Pythagorean Life. In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

Diodorus. Historical Library

S. Franzoi. "Personality characteristics of the crosscountry hitchhiker." Adolescence, Fall 1985

Precisely which lands, aside from Egypt and Persia, Pythagoras did or did not hit is a matter on which scholars, both ancient and modern, disagree. My account relies on Pythagoras' adventurous nature and assumes he reached all those destinations credited to him by his various chroniclers. Feel free to subtract from the list. However it would be wise to remember that Pythagoras managed to imbibe knowledge from many territories he didn't visit personally. For example, he may or may not have reached India, but it is certain that he studied its philosophies.

Grant feels that Pythagoras picked up knowledge from the shamans of Scythia and Thrace, then popularized them within the Greek world. Michael Grant. The Rise of the Greeks. New York

Will Durant. The Story of Civilization

The Brihadaranyaka and the Chandogya.

Buddha - Siddhartha Gautama, otherwise known as Sakyamuni - would have been in his mid 30s when Pythagoras ended his travels at the age of 56 and set about creating his school of philosophy.

Thomas Bulfinch. The Age of Fable. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

Iamblichus. The Life of Pythagoras or On the Pythagorean Life. In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

Iamblichus. The Life of Pythagoras or On the Pythagorean Life. In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

Iamblichus. The Life of Pythagoras or On the Pythagorean Life. In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

Iamblichus. The Life of Pythagoras or On the Pythagorean Life. In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

Iamblichus. The Life of Pythagoras or On the Pythagorean Life. In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

Iamblichus. The Life of Pythagoras or On the Pythagorean Life. In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

Valerius Geist. Life Strategies, Human Evolution, Environmental Design

A.G. Smithers; D.M. Lobley. "Dogmatism, social attitudes and personality." British Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology, June 1978

Overexcitables (called "trait anxious" subjects in one study and "high worriers" in another) see ambiguity as more threatening than those not afflicted with hypersensitivity. (C. MacLeod, I.L. Cohen. "Anxiety and the interpretation of ambiguity

Will Durant. The Story of Civilization

Diogenes Laertius. The Life of Pythagoras. In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

Will Durant interprets this silence as meaning that one was simply not allowed to ask questions, to quibble with orders and ideology, or to see "the master" in person. (Will Durant. The Story of Civilization

Will Durant. The Story of Civilization

Yvonne Walsh, Robert Bor. "Psychological consequences of involvement in a new religious movement or cult." Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 9(1), 1996

Bulfinch, for example, titles one chapter of his Age of Fable "Pythagoras-Egyptian Deities-Oracles." (Thomas Bulfinch. Age of Fable.)

Michael Grant. The Rise of the Greeks

There is no sense in removing the sexual titillation from our scholarship when it is historically legitimate. Speculation that Alcibiades and Socrates shared more than just their dialogs was rife in antiquity and remains a subject still up for grabs today. Allow me to present for your consideration one of the many tidbits fueling this tabloid-style historical debate

Will Durant. The Story of Civilization

Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Richard Crawley. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

Xenophon. Memorabilia

Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War.

In Alcibiades' defense, it must be said that he was recalled to Athens to answer charges of impiety before the battles could commence, and was forced to leave the command of his army to others. It's entirely possible that had he been allowed to general the troops himself, the mission to seize Syracuse would have been a rousing success.

Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War.

The specific charge on which Socrates was "impeached" was that of corrupting Athens' youth. (Plato. Euthyphro. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

Saint Augustine. The City of God. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

Children rejected by others tend to be more academically gifted than the "better-adjusted" sorts who have spurned them. K.R. Wentzel, S.R. Asher. "The academic lives of neglected, rejected, popular, and controversial children." Child Development, June 1995

Introverts distinguish themselves creatively in a wide variety of fields, from architecture, painting, and sculpture to science. (Hans J. Eysenck, Michael W. Eysenck. Personality and Individual Differences

For the left brain as our quibbler over the boundaries between conceptual categories - a Socratic specialty - see

N.N. Bogdanov; V.G. Solonichenko. "Williams syndrome as a model of genetically determined right hemisphere dominance." Neuroscience & Behavioral Physiology, May/June 1997

M.G. Forest. "Role of androgens in fetal and pubertal development." Hormone Research, 18

M. Hassler. "Testosterone and musical talent." Experimental and Clinical Endocrinology and Diabetes, 98

Chris Bader, Alfred Demaris. "A test of the Stark-Bainbridge theory of affiliation with religious cults and sects." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, September 1996

The word "shyness" is one Jerome Kagan, the king of this field of study, has used frequently to sum up the temperamental trait which both he and other researchers also call "withdrawal," "limbic sensitivity," "overexcitability," and "introversion." (J. Kagan, J.S. Reznick, N. Snidman. "Biological bases of childhood shyness." Science, 8 April 1988

Iamblichus. The Life of Pythagoras or On the Pythagorean Life. In Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library

Unquestioning obedience was one of the qualities Pythagoras seemed to prize the most, at least according to Iamblichus' account of the interviews with which Pythagoras personally screened applicants for admission. Whether Iamblichus' reconstruction was historically accurate or simply his projection of his own desired criterion for fourth century a.d. neo-Platonic followers is hard to ascertain.

Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Gregory R. Crane, editor, The Perseus Project

Martin West. "Early Greek Philosophy." In The Oxford History of the Classical World

Pythagoras' version of reincarnation was distinctly Hindu

Pythagoras justified his vegetarianism with the Indian argument that meat-eating might lead you to accidentally wolf down the reincarnation of an ancestor. (Diodorus. Historical Library

Iamblichus. The Life of Pythagoras or On the Pythagorean Life

Democracy was several generations old back in the Greek homeland, but it was apparently still a novelty in the Italian colonies.

David Fideler. Personal communication. July 15, 1998.

Aristotle. Metaphysics. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

"Pythagoreans... At the centre, they say, is fire, and the earth is one of the stars, creating night and day by its circular motion about the centre." (Aristotle. Heavens.)

Pausanias. Description of Greece.

Herodotus. Histories. Gregory R. Crane, editor, The Perseus Project, July, 1998

Diodorus. Historical Library

Euclid. The thirteen books of Euclid's Elements. Translated by Sir Thomas L. Heath. Gregory R. Crane, editor, The Perseus Project, July, 1998. Heath's commentaries, cite a swarm of Euclid's Pythagoreanisms.

Plutarch. Numa Pompilius. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

Demosthenes calls Archytas an administrator of remarkable ability. (Demosthenes. Erotic Essay 46. Gregory R. Crane, editor, The Perseus Project, August, 1998

Diodorus Historical Library

Already in the first century b.c., Diodorus, writing from Roman Sicily, just below the Italian boot, says of the Pythagoreans that "mankind speaks of them as if they were alive today." Diodorus. Historical Library.

Pythagoreanism provided a potent legacy for western moderns. Gushing through the pipeline of neo-Platonism, Pythagoras' concepts saturated Christianity, shaping a host of central Church doctrines which would have seemed extremely alien to Jesus. The social system designed by Pythagoras for his community of followers was echoed in the Christian monastery movement, which began during the fourth century a.d. Pythagoreanism flared to life in the secular philosophy of Europe from the middle ages onward. Montaigne, writing in the 1500s, refers to "the Pythagoreans" as a living presence. (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. Essays. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

For a rich harvest of Pythagorean cyber-cultists, see such sites as

Pythagoreanism influenced Copernicus via the aforementioned sun-centered concepts of the Pythagorean Philolaus and through the preservation of Philolaus' ideas in the works of Aristotle. (Aristotle. Heavens.)