The Myth of Invariance: The Origin of the Gods, Mathematics and Music from the Rig Veda to Plato

Ernest McClain's book constitutes an intellectual breakthrough of utmost significance. It offers a persuasive explanation of crucial passages in texts of world literature - the Ṛg Veda, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Bible, Plato that have defied critics of the separate concerned disciplines. All these passages deal with numbers. What sounds like mathematical nonsense or literary gibberish has been given life and meaning by McClain's incisive thoughts. The recurrence, moreover, of identical and similar numbers in Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Palestine confirms ever growing speculations on the historical continuity and direction of a basic spiritual tradition. Dr. McClain's method is simple enough: he recognizes music as the one force capable of projecting a philosophic synthesis. For this approach he is not likely to learn the immediate approval and support of theologians, philosophers, philologists, mathematicians, and others who have become too specialized to view the whole rather than the detail. Nor is he likely to find on his side musicians who consider their art primarily a branch of amusement and musicologists who are instinctively afraid of numbers. Yet his approach, neglected for centuries, is anything but new. He learned it by taking Plato literally. Plato insists on the superior role of music in the education of the whole man. In antiquity musical symbolism was understood directly. When in the course of history the role of music as a spiritual force was increasingly sacrificed to that of individual expression or entertainment, the interpretation of once very clear texts suffered. McClain's great accomplishment lies in his recognition of music as the spiritual model par excellence throughout antiquity and in his courageous and self-critical application of this insight to other fields. He has provided philologists, philosophers, theologians, historians, mathematicians, and musicians with a sound basis for further explorations in their own fields