Pythagoras 582 520 B C All is number

Pythagoras 582 - 520 B. C. “All is number”

Pythagoras w/ Some Famous Dudes • Born in Samos, Greece • Born circa 582 B. C. • Was taught about early lonian philosophers Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.

Pythagoras • Born in Samos, Greece • Born circa 582 B. C. • Was taught about early lonian philosophers Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. • As a disciple of Anaximander, his astronomy was the natural development of Anaximander’s. • Also, the way in which the Pythagorean geometry developed also bears witness to its descent from that of Miletos.

Pythagoras • The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Pythagoras may have been one of the world's greatest contributors, but he wrote nothing, and it is hard to say how much of the doctrine we know as Pythagorean is due to the founder of the society and how much is later development. • It is also hard to say how much of what we are told about the life of Pythagoras is trustworthy; for a mass of legend gathered around his name at an early date. • Sometimes he is represented as a man of science, and sometimes as a preacher of mystic doctrines, and we might be tempted to regard one or other of those characters as alone historical

Pythagoreanism • Pythagoras founded his own cult & school • Pythagoreans taught that “of rational beings, one sort is divine, one is human, and another such as Pythagoras” (Iamblichus, VP 31) • Pythagoras founded at Kroton (in southern Italy) a society which was at once a religious community and a scientific school. • The Cult people were called Pythagoreans • It was based on religious, political, and philosophical beliefs.

Pythagoras • Pythagoras believed the idea that souls are immortal and existed before our births. • All knowledge, he explains, is actually recollected from this prior existence. In perhaps the most famous passage in this dialogue • Socrates was fascinated by Pythagoras and debated and discussed some of his beliefs • Pythagoreans and later Plato believed that the elements are composed of geometrical figures. Space is defined as the limit of the surrounding body towards what is surrounded. Time is defined as the measure of motion in regard to what is earlier and later. It thus depends for its existence upon motion. (relayed in the Meno)

Pythagoras • Pythagoras argued that there are three kinds of men, just as there are three classes of strangers who come to the Olympic Games. The lowest consists of those who come to buy and sell, and next above them are those who come to compete. Best of all are those who simply come to look on… • Pythagoras also taught the doctrine of Rebirth or transmigration, which we may have learned from the contemporary Orphics. Xenophanes made fun of him for pretending to recognize the voice of a departed friend in the howls of a beaten dog. • One of the clearest strands in the early evidence for Pythagoras is his expertise in religious ritual. Isocrates emphasizes that “he more conspicuously than others paid attention to sacrifices and rituals in temples” (Busiris 28). • Herodotus gives an example: the Pythagoreans agree with the Egyptians in not allowing the dead to be buried in wool (II. 81). It is not surprising that Pythagoras, as an expert on the fate of the soul after death. should also be an expert on the religious rituals surrounding death

The Cult? • To be in the cult– members had to swear on the Holy Triangle (Tetractys)

The Cult? • Pythagorean way of life thus consisted in the proper observance of religious ritual. One major piece of evidence for this emphasis on ritual is the symbola or acusmata (“things heard”), short maxims that were handed down orally. The earliest source to quote acusmatais Aristotle, in the fragments of his now lost treatise on the Pythagoreans. • A second characteristic of the Pythagorean way of life was the emphasis on dietary restrictions. According to Dicaearchus, one of Pythagoras' most well-known doctrines was that “all animate beings are of the same family. ” (Porphyry, VP 19) • The acusmata indicate that the Pythagorean way of life embodied a strict regimen not just regarding religious ritual and diet but also in almost every aspect of life. Some of the restrictions appear to be largely arbitrary taboos, e. g. , “one must put the right shoe on first” or “one must not travel the public roads. ” (Porphyry, VP 19)

The Cult? • In the modern world Pythagoras is most of all famous as a mathematician, because of theorem named after him, and secondarily as a cosmologist, because of the striking view of a universe ascribed to him in the later tradition, in which the heavenly bodies produce “the music of the spheres” by their movements. • It is striking that a very similar picture of Pythagoras emerges from the evidence for his cosmology. A famous discovery is attributed to Pythagoras in the later tradition, i. e. , that the central musical concords (the octave, fifth and fourth) correspond to the whole number ratios 2 : 1, 3 : 2 and 4 : 3 respectively (e. g. , Nicomachus, Handbook 6 ) • The only early source to associate Pythagoras with the whole number ratios that govern the concords is Xenocrates (Fr. 9) • The Greeks burned his house down because of his mathematical genius and mastery

Some Discoveries • Discovered the existence of irrational numbers. • The Pythagorean Theorem (a² + b² = c²) • He was the first to distinguish between prime and composite. • Discovered ideas in music and astronomy. • d² = h² + a² + b²

Discoveries debated • Modern scholarship has shown, moreover, that the truth of theorem as an arithmetical technique, once again without proof, was known before Pythagoras among the Babylonians (Burkert 1972 a, 429). • So it is possible that Pythagoras just passed on to the Greeks a truth that he learned from the East. d² = h² + a² + b²

Oddities • Pythagoras was said to have been seen on the same day at the same time in both Metapontum and Croton; he killed a deadly snake by biting it; as he was crossing a river it spoke to him (all citations are from Aristotle, Fr. 191) • His Cult members dietary restrictions included not eating beans (Porphyry, VP 19) • His Cult members were recorded to have been silent or mute for extended periods of time. • Cult members were to abstain from sex. • (But if they couldn’t abstain, they could wait and just have sex in the winter) • Sacred Numbers • 7= Wisdom • 8= Justice • 10= Most Sacred number

Death • Died 520 B. C. • Pythagoras himself had to flee from Kroton to Metapontion, where he died.