Commentary (p.92): Nichomacus is an idealist. He states his position in a way that recalls Plato's distinction between "that which ever exists, having no becoming" and "that which is ever becoming, never existent,"... On the one hand there are "the real things... which exist forever changeless and in the same way in the cosmos, never departing from their existence even for a brief moment," and on the other "the original eternal matter and substance" which was entirely "subject to deviation and change."
Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)
Context: The ancients, who under the leadership of Pythagoras first made science systematic, defined philosophy as the love of wisdom... [Οἱ παλαιοὶ καὶ πρώτοι μεθοδεύσαντες ἐπιστήμην κατάρξαντος Πυθαγόρου ὡρίζοντο φιλοσοφίαν εἶναι φιλίαν σοφίας... ] This 'wisdom' he defined as the knowledge, or science, of the truth in real things, conceiving 'science' to be a steadfast and firm apprehension of the underlying substance. and 'real things' to be those which continue uniformly and the same in the universe and never depart even briefly from their existence; these real things would be things immaterial...<!--p.181
