Musicologist Ernest McClain spent years studying ancient tuning systems and proposed that Atlantis's numbers behave like music, not history. Drawing on Plato's Pythagorean training, he linked the Timaeus cosmos to musical intervals — octave, fifth, fourth. The fall of Atlantis became a harmonious system slipping into dissonance and chaos.
Musicologist Ernest McClain proposed Atlantis numbers encode musical tuning system
Key facts
- Ernest McClain was a musicologist who studied ancient tuning systems
- McClain argued the numbers in Atlantis behave like music rather than history
- Plato learned from the Pythagorean mystery schools, which believed numbers reveal deeper wisdom
- In the Timaeus, Plato describes the cosmos using mathematical ratios corresponding to musical intervals including the octave, fifth, and fourth
- McClain interpreted Atlantis's fall not as a flood but as a harmonious tuning system falling out of tune into noise and chaos
- In Egyptian symbolism, water represented chaos rather than literal floods, aligning with Atlantis dissolving back into primordial disorder
Sources
Ernest G. McClain, The Pythagorean Plato: Prelude to the Song Itselfphilpapers.org
The Pythagorean Plato: Prelude to the Song Itself. Ernest G. McClain. Abstract. This article has no associated abstract. (fix it).
McClain, Ernest G. | - Atlantipediaatlantipedia.ie
Ernest G. McClain (1918-2014) was a professor emeritus of music at Brooklyn College, New York. He is also the author of a highly original idea.
In Memoriam Ernest G. McClainspeculumcriticum.blogspot.com
"Plato would never," he informed McClain, "have planted all that musicology for you to find." To which one rejoinder must surely be, well then, ...
Ernest G. McClain - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
McClain is known for his efforts to analyze music in the context of ancient knowledge of mathematics and philosophy.
The Myth of Invariance: The Origin of the Gods, Mathematics and ...journals.uchicago.edu
The Myth of Invariance: The Origin of the Gods, Mathematics and Music from the Rg Veda to Plato. Ernest G. McClain The Pythagorean Plato: Prelude to the Song ...
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