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Pythagoras

Pythagoras Pythagoras was born around 569 B.C. in Samos, Ionia, and died around 475 B.C. Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher, and mathematician. Pythagoras also developed the Pythagorean brotherhood. This was religious in nature, however it formulated principals that influenced the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle, and contributed to the development of mathematics and Western rational philosophy. Pythagoras not only developed the theorem of A2+B2=C2, but he was also the first to create the music scale of today. Unfortunately none of Pythagoras’s writings from this development time have survived to present day. In the brotherhood that Pythagoras created, he was the head of the society with an inner circle of followers known as mathematikoi. The mathematikoi lived permanently with the society, had no personal possessions and were vegetarians. They were all taught by Pythagoras himself, and they had strict rules to abide by. Some of his rules ranged from; At its deepest level, reality is mathematical in nature, to that all brothers of the order should observe strict loyalty and secrecy. Both men and women were permitted to become members of the society, in fact several Pythagorean women, later became famous philosophers. The outer circles of the society were known as the akousmatics, and they lived in their own houses, only coming to the society during the day. They were allowed their own possessions, and were not required to be vegetarians. Nothing is actually known of Pythagoras’s actual work. The school that Pythagoras attended practiced secrecy and communalism, making it hard to distinguish between the work of Pythagoras himself, and the work of his followers. Pythagoras’s school made outstanding contributions to mathematics, and this makes it possible to be fairly certain about some of Pythagoras’s mathematical contributions. Pythagoras was mainly interested in the principals of mathematics, the concept of numbers, the concept of a triangle or other mathematical figure, and the abstract idea of a proof. The Pythagorean having been brought up in the study of mathematics, thought that things are numbers, and that the whole cosmos is a scale and a number. This generalization stemmed from Pythagoras’s observations in music, mathematics, and astronomy. Pythagoras noticed that vibrating strings produced harmonious tones when the ratios of the lengths of the strings are whole numbers, and that the ratios could be extended to other instruments. Actually Pythagoras made remarkable contributions to the mathematical theory of music. Pythagoras used his musical talent of playing the lyre as means to help those who were ill. Pythagoras studied properties of numbers much like mathematicians of today would. The fact of even and odd numbers triangular numbers, and perfect numbers. However Pythagoras gave numbers a personality. Each number had a personality; masculine or feminine, perfect or incomplete, and beautiful or ugly. Modern mathematics has deliberately eliminated these personality factors from its presence. Today we mainly remember Pythagoras for his famous geometry theorem, the Pythagorean theorem. Although the theorem, now known as Pythaoras’s theorem, was actually known to the Babylonians 1000 years earlier, he may have been the first to prove it. Although Pythagoras is thought of by some as to have been one of the world’s greatest men, none of his writings are actually available. It’s a good thing that his followers had the good sense to record lots of it for him. He had many more contributions in life than just the Pythagoras’s theorem, which is all some know him for, but also contributed greatly to music, and changed the lives of many in the future to come with his teachings, and philosophies. Bibliography:

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