
Omphalos stone, Delphi. This is thought to be a (Roman?) replica of the original sacred stone which mysterious disappeared and was displayed outside the temple
Sometime in the second half of the 4th century bc, a Pythaogorean philosopher living in Southern Italy put forward his idea about the principles of man. He wrote that the rational animal is made up of four principles: the brain, the heart, the navel, and the genital organ, in order of hierarchy. These choices, perhaps not the four you would have chosen, are explained by dividing the functions of the body between these principles. The navel is the seat of implantation and the growth of the embryo, from which future growth and nutrition is provided. Whilst these philosophical ideas of Philolaus of Croton are preserved only in the fragmentary records of later Greek philosopher, we can assume from what we have that Philolaus considered the navel as the centre of the body. Continue reading