Pythagoras was one of the great geniuses of the West and yet, apart from his famous Pythagorean theorem, he is virtually unknown. If we rely on modern scholars and academics, argues Carol Dunn, we find that his long-forgotten legacy is misunderstood and even distorted, and is therefore almost nonexistent. First, it shows that the early pioneers of modern physics, mainly Newton and Kepler, scientifically and mathematically confirmed Pythagoras' discoveries of the sixth century BC -- the heliocentric theory of our cosmos and the parallel theory regarding the Harmony of the Spheres. These are discoveries for which Pythagoras has received scant recognition by the Western philosophical tradition. Second, the author argues against the proposition that the heliocentric theory was initiated not by Pythagoras but instead by his student Philolaus, who lived in the fifth century BC, and whose astronomical theory, according to Dunn, is not based on science. Pythagoras, the Master is well researched and accessible, offering readers a firm basis to reexamine the importance of Pythagoras' work and whether he or Philolaus discovered these paradigm-changing astronomical theories two thousand years before Western science rediscovered them in the seventeenth century.

For millennia, hundreds of books have been written on Plato's dialogues and philosophy. In this book, Carol Dunn makes the case that the major modern scholars interpret Plato with an overwhelming focus on understanding the rational content of the dialogues, but omit or neglect the project of their purpose. Once they have mined the individual dialogues for their meaning, they neglect to share what readers can or should do with the knowledge gained from their investigations. The author makes the case that Plato is engaged not only in thinking but also, and more important, in doing-that what we do with the knowledge is crucial, because it can determine the meaning and purpose of our own life. She saw that he was not merely engaging in rational philosophical discussion, but that the dialogues of Plato, especially up to the Republic, embody the Socratic exhortation for each individual to "take care for the soul." The dialogues therefore embody both a rational philosophy and a system of spiritual/religious principles and doctrines whose purpose is to lay out-in a public forum-the path a true disciple needs to take to have a personal and direct experience of spiritual illumination, or enlightenment. This book is not just for scholars of Plato's philosophy, but for anyone who wishes to penetrate an ancient, though largely overlooked, path to initiation.