In her work, written in the form of a
catechism, she commented on the music-theoretical debate concerning the proper roles of
reason and
sensory experience in the study of
music. Despite her apparent adherence to Pythagoreanism, a school whose theorists (the
canonici) put music on a
rational and
mathematical basis, there is no apparent hostility in her citations of the
empiricist followers of
Aristoxenus (the
musici); perhaps the methodological division was not a stark absolute during her period or from her
point of view. Ptolemais also makes reference to musicologists who gave equal importance to
perception and reason, preferring to see Aristoxenus himself (as opposed to his followers) in this light, and even stressing the compatible role of perception in the Pythagorean theory: In this same passage, Ptolemais criticizes the extreme partisans of both schools, "the Pythagoreans who enjoyed disputing with the musici" for dismissing perception entirely (despite their contradictory "adoption of something perceivable in the beginning"), and "some of the musici who follow Aristoxenus" for adopting their master's "theory based upon thought" but proceeding "through expertise on musical instruments" and "regard[ing] perception as authoritative, and reason as accompanying it, and for necessity only." ==Notes==