Philosopher and mathematician, born in Samos, Greece. He settled at Crotona, S Italy (c.530 BC) where he founded a moral and religious school. He eventually fled from there because of persecution, settling at Megapontum in Lucania. Pythagoreanism was first a way of life, of moral abstinence and purification, not solely a philosophy; its teaching included the doctrine of the transmigration of souls between successive bodies. He is associated with discoveries involving the chief musical intervals, the relations of numbers, and with more fundamental beliefs about the representation of the world of nature through numbers. The famous geometrical theorem attributed to him was probably developed later by members of the Pythagorean school. Pythagorean thought exerted considerable influence on Plato's doctrines.
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Western Philosophy Pre-Socratic philosophy |
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|---|---|
| Pythagoras | |
| Name: | Pythagoras |
| Birth: | ca. 507 BC |
| School/tradition: | Pythagoreanism |
| Main interests: | Philosophy of mathematics |
| Notable ideas: | Numbers as the ultimate reality |
| Influences: | Thales |
| Influenced: | Plato |
Pythagoras of Samos (Greek: Πυθαγόρας; circa 582 BC – circa 507 BC) was an Ionian (Greek) mathematician and philosopher, founder of the mathematical, mystic, religious, and scientific society called Pythagoreans. Known as "the father of numbers", Pythagoras made influential contributions to philosophy and religious teaching in the late 6th century BC. We do know that Pythagoras and his students believed that everything was related to mathematics and, through mathematics, everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic patterns or cycles.
Pythagoras was one of the first to speculate that human life begins with a blend of male and female fluids, or semens, originating in body parts (Enyclopaedia Britannica).
Biography
Pythagoras was born on the island of Samos (Greek East Coast), off the coast of Asia Minor. According to Iamblichus, Thales, impressed with his abilities, advised Pythagoras to go to Memphis in Egypt and study with the priests there who were renowned for their wisdom.
Upon his migration from Samos to Crotone, Pythagoras established a secret religious society very similar to (and possibly influenced by) the earlier Orphic cult.
Pythagoras undertook a reform of the cultural life of Crotone, urging the citizens to follow virtue and form an elite circle of followers around himself. Those who joined the inner circle of Pythagoras's society called themselves the Mathematikoi. Other students who lived in neighboring areas were also permitted to attend Pythagoras's school.
According to Iamblichus, the Pythagoreans followed a structured life of religious teaching, common meals, exercise, reading and philosophical study.
According to Hermippus of Smytna (De Pythagora, apud: Josephus, Contra Apionem, I, 162/165) Pythagoras was familiar and an admirer of Jewish customs and wisdom. Hermippus of Smytna says about Pythagoras: "In practising and repeating these percepts he was imitating and appropriating the doctrines of Jews and Thracians. Thackeray, The Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge (Mass.)-London)
The history of the Pythagorean theorem that bears his name is complex. Whether Pythagoras himself proved this theorem is not known, as it was common in the ancient world to credit a famous teacher with the discoveries of his students. The earliest known mention of Pythagoras's name in connection with the theorem occurred five centuries after his death, in the writings of Cicero and Plutarch. It is also believed that the Indian mathematician Baudhayana discovered the Pythagorean Theorem around 800 BC, about 300 years before Pythagoras.
Today, Pythagoras is revered as a prophet by the Ahlu l-Tawhīd or Druze faith along with his fellow Greek, Plato.
According to myth, he died at the hands of a soldier, because he refused to trample a bean-field while fleeing.
Pythagoreans
Pythagoras's followers were commonly called "Pythagoreans." Another rule that they had was to help a man "in raising a burden, but do not assist him in laying it down, for it is a great sin to encourage indolence" and they said "departing from your house, turn not back, for the furies will be your attendants" this axiom reminded them that it was better to learn none of the truth about mathematics, God, and the universe at all than to learn a little without learning all. In his biography of Pythagoras (written seven centuries after Pythagoras's time) Porphyry stated that this silence was "of no ordinary kind." Porphyry wrote "the mathematikoi learned the more detailed and exactly elaborate version of this knowledge, the akousmatikoi (were) those which had heard only the summary headings of his (Pythagoras's) writings, without the more exact exposition." According to Iamblichus, the akousmatikoi were the exoteric disciples who listened to lectures that Pythagoras gave out loud from behind a veil. The akousmatikoi were not allowed to see Pythagoras and they were not taught the inner secrets of the cult. After the murder of Pythagoras and a number of the mathematikoi by the cohorts of Cylon, a resentful disciple, the two groups split from each other entirely, with Pythagoras's wife Theano and their two daughters leading the mathematikoi.
Theano, daughter of the Orphic initiate Brontinus, was a mathematician in her own right. In a time when women were usually considered property and relegated to the role of housekeeper or spouse, Pythagoras allowed women to function on equal terms in his society.
The Pythagorean society is associated with prohibitions, such as not to step over a crossbar, and not to eat beans (for the inside of beans contain embryos like humans). The abusive epithet mystikos logos ("mystical speech") was hurled at Pythagoras even in ancient times to discredit him. The key here is that "akousmata" means "rules," so that the superstitious taboos primarily applied to the akousmatikoi, and many of the rules were probably invented after Pythagoras's death and independent from the mathematikoi (arguably the real preservers of the Pythagorean tradition).
Beans, black and white, were the means used in voting. do not vex with sharp words a man swollen with anger, 'eat not heart', i.e.
The Pythagoreans are known for their theory of the transmigration of souls, and also for their theory that numbers constitute the true nature of things. Pythagoras is also closely linked with Pherecydes of Syros, the man ancient commentators tend to credit as the first Greek to teach a transmigration of souls. Ancient commentators agree that Pherekydes was Pythagoras's most intimate teacher.
It was the Pythagoreans who discovered that the relationship between musical notes could be expressed in numerical ratios of small whole numbers (see Pythagorean tuning). Pythagoras was interested in music and the Pythagoreans were musicians as well as mathematicians. According to legend, the way Pythagoras discovered that musical notes could be translated into mathematical equations was when he was walking some day and he passed by some blacksmiths, he heard their anvils being hit and thought that the sounds they made were beautiful and harmonious and decided that whatever scientific law caused this to happen must be a mathematical law that could be applied to music.
Literary works
No texts by Pythagoras survive, although forgeries under his name — a few of which remain extant — did circulate in antiquity. Pythagoras appears as a character in the last book of Ovid's Metamorphoses , where Ovid has him expound upon his philosophical viewpoints.
Influence on Plato
Pythagoras or in a broader sense, the Pythagoreans, allegedly exercised an important influence on the work of Plato. Hare, his influence consists of three points: a) the platonic Republic might be related to the idea of "a tightly organized community of like-minded thinkers", like the one established by Pythagoras in Croton. b) there is evidence that Plato possibly took from Pythagoras the idea that mathematics and, generally speaking, abstract thinking is a secure basis for philosophical thinking as well as "for substantial theses in science and morals". c) Plato and Pythagoras shared a "mystical approach to the soul and its place in the material world".
Plato's harmonics were clearly influenced by the work of Archytas, a genuine Pythagorean of the third generation, who made important contributions to geometry, reflected in Book VIII of Euclid's Elements.
Influence on Esoteric Groups
Pythagoras started a secret society called the Pythagorean brotherhood devoted to the study of mathematics.
Pythagorean theory was tremendously influential on later numerology, which was extremely popular throughout the Middle East in the ancient world.
Quotes concerning Pythagoras
"So greatly was he admired that his disciples used to be called 'prophets to declare the voice of God'...", Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, VIII.14, Pythagoras; 333 "...the Metapontines named his house the Temple of Demeter and his porch the Museum, so we learn from Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History.", Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, VIII.15, Pythagoras;Primary sources
Only a few relevant source texts deal with Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, most are available in different translations. Apuleius also writes about Pythagoras in Apologia, including a story of him being taught by Babylonian disciples of Zoroaster, circa 150.
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