Doctrines
Aristotle speaks of Hippasus as holding the element of fire to be the cause of all things; and Sextus Empiricus contrasts him with the Pythagoreans in this respect, that he believed the arche to be material, whereas they thought it was incorporeal, namely, number. Diogenes Laërtius tells us that Hippasus believed that "there is a definite time which the changes in the universe take to complete, and that the universe is limited and ever in motion." According to one statement, Hippasus left no writings, according to another he was the author of the Mystic Discourse, written to bring Pythagoras into disrepute.
A scholium on Plato's Phaedo notes him as an early experimenter in music theory, claiming that he made use of bronze disks to discover the fundamental musical ratios, 4:3, 3:2, and 2:1.
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