Politics & History
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PYTHAGORAS (570 BCE – 495 BCE) WAS PRE - SOCRATIC GREEK PHILOSOPHER,PYTHAGORAS IS SOMEONE KNOWN FAR MORE THAN HIS THEORIES AND IDEAS IN MATHEMATICS THAN IN PHILOSOPHY.PYTHAGORAS WAS TREATED LIKE A GOD.HE GAVE SPEECHES BEHIND A CURTAIN.

The School of Athens detail from the left hand side showing Pythagoras surrounded by students and Michelangelo.The Greek polymath Pythagoras (c. 570–c. 495 BC) ignited the golden age of mathematics with the development of numerical logic and the discovery of his namesake theorem of geometry, which furnished the world’s first foothold toward the notion of scientific proof and has been etched into the mind of every schoolchild in the millennia since. His ideas went on to influence Plato, Copernicus, Descartes, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein, and the school he founded made the then-radical decision to welcome women as members.

Pythagoras was an Ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher.He was on the Greek island of Samos around 570 BC and died in Greece probably around 495 BC.In 530 BC he moved to Italy and established a religious group known as the Pythagoreans. The group was very secretive and were vegetarians who worshipped the God Apollo. They didn’t own any possessions.He is best known for the Pythagorean theory named after him. Often referred to as Pythagoras’ Rule, Pythagoras’ Theorem states that in a right-angled triangle, the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.He believed that science and religion were connected. He also believed that the human soul returned over and over again into people, animals and even vegetables.Pythagoras believed that he had already lived four lives, all of which he could remember. Others claimed that he was able to travel through space and time and could talk to plants and animals.Pythagoras believed the Earth was round and that mathematics could explain the physical world. He also devised the triangular figure of 4 rows, adding up to 10 and believed the design to be sacred.A special type of cup is credited to Pythagoras. The cup works normally when the user sips from it, although the contents are spilled if the user drinks too quickly.Pythagoras may have had a condition known as synesthesia. A person with the condition is said to be able to hear colours and see music, or associate smells with people’s names.No books or writings by Pythagoras have survived. He probably taught by speaking to his followers, although in the centuries after his death, several forgeries were discovered.The philosopher Plato was influenced by Pythagoras, and thought that mathematics affected philosophy. Pythagoras also influenced the establishment of the Freemasons and other secret societies.Pythagoras, the man behind the Pythagorean theorem was more than just a mathematician. He was a spiritual leader with followers who thought he’d been sent from Heaven. For the Pythagoreans, math was a religious experience and some equations were divine secrets, unfit for public eyes.When your middle school teacher showed you how to find the hypotenuse of a right triangle, you probably didn’t get down on your knees and start worshiping him as a god. But when it first happened in ancient Greece, that was pretty much how people reacted.There was a whole cult behind the man who figured out how to measure the side of a triangle, and—as you might imagine—they had some pretty strange beliefs. Pythagoras had followers. A whole group of mathematicians signed up to be his pupils, to learn everything he knew, and to help him solve the great riddles of the universe. But this was more than just a group of people who liked math—it was a full-blown religion.Numbers, Pythagoras believed, were the elements behind the entire universe. He taught his followers that the world was controlled by mathematical harmonies that made up every part of reality. More than that, though, these numbers were sacred almost like gods.The Pythagoreans had sacred numbers. Seven was the number of wisdom, 8 was the number of justice, and 10 was the most sacred number of all. Every part of math was holy. When they solved a new mathematical theorem, they would give thanks to the gods by sacrificing an ox.The Greeks thought it was a little freaky. They didn’t just call it a philosophy or a religion they saw it as a cult and a dangerous one at that. Pythagoras scared people. They even burned down his house and chased him out of town, fearing his mystic command over the sacredness of numbers.The Pythagoreans had a sacred symbol called the Tetractys. It was a triangle with 10 points across four rows, meant to symbolize the organization of space and the universe. Ten, they believed, was the number of the highest order, which contained the course of all mortal things. And they literally worshiped it.Pythagoras’s followers had a set prayer they used to worship the number 10. “Bless us, divine number, thou who generated gods and men!” they would say. “For the divine number begins with the profound, pure unity until it comes to the holy four; then it begets the mother of all, the all-comprising, all-bounding, the firstborn, the never-swerving, the never-tiring holy ten, the keyholder of all.”Everyone had to do it. If you wanted to join the Pythagoreans, you had to swear an oath to the holy triangle. They would swear their loyalty “by that pure, holy, four-lettered name on high,” meaning the Tetractys. Then they would have to swear by Pythagoras himself, who, like a mathematical Prometheus, “to our mortal race did bring the Tetractys. Pythagoras’s followers really believed that he was a demigod. They called him “the divine Pythagoras” and told people that he was the son of a god—usually either Hermes or Apollo, depending on whom you asked.They even had hymns to Pythagoras’s divinity. “Pythais, fairest of the Samian tribe,” one song went, “Bore from th’ embraces of the God of Day. Renown’d Pythagoras, the friend of Jove!”They even thought that Pythagoras had superpowers. His followers said that he could tame eagles and bears by stroking them. He could control any animal, for that matter, with the sheer power of his voice, and he had the power to write words on the face of the Moon.One of the biggest legends about him was that he had a golden thigh. When someone doubted his divinity, it was said that Pythagoras would show them his shimmering thigh and win a new convert. In one story, he showed a priest his thigh and, as a reward, was given a magical golden dart that let him fly over mountains, expel diseases, and calm storms.

Pythagoreans' Hymn to the Rising Sun,The Golden Verses of Pythagoras (Greek: Χρύσεα Ἔπη, Chrysea Epê; Latin: Aurea Carmina) are a collection of moral exhortations. They comprise 71 lines written in dactylic hexameter verse and are traditionally attributed to Pythagoras.The exact origins of the Golden Verses are unknown and there are varying opinions regarding their dating. It appears that the verses may have been known as early as the third century BCE[2] but their existence as we know them cannot be confirmed prior to the fifth century CE.

Like philosophy, the sciences of math can change anything in the lives of people directly involved with it. It can absorb one into the mysterious world of numbers and the endless universe of philosophical ideas. Pythagoras not only left behind distinctive works, but also mysterious myths of his personality.Pythagoras was already well-known in his hometown Samos for his special talent in math. He gained the respect of his teachers and of the elders thanks to his eloquence, his directness in expressing his innovative ideas and his extroversion. Thales, his teacher, was almost exclusively engaged in teaching math to his best student, Pythagoras.After teaching him everything he possibly could, Thales encouraged his student to travel to Egypt and get advice from priests that would make him “the most divine and the wisest of all men.” Pythagoras ended up leaving his hometown at the age of 18, because of the tyrannical regime that suppressed his ideas and the enrichment of his knowledge.His lifelong journey turned his good relations with religion into adoration and released his great love towards astronomy and geometry through his talent in math. The Egyptian priests were skeptical of him, so they introduced him to their stricter way of life, religion and learning. All doubts were lost though, as Pythagoras’ passion for learning and wit was recognized.When he returned to Samos, he funded a school in order to impart knowledge to his countrymen, but due to their lack of interest, he moved to Southern Italy in order to find new and more cooperative students. At the same time, he funded a mysticist, political and religious fraternity which caused quite a stir, but there is no further information available on this.His mysterious personality was noticeable during his teaching; no notes and questions were allowed, that is why a great part of his works are lost. There is no additional information even on the renowned Pythagorean Theorem.It is also not known if Pythagoras invented this theorem on his own or with the help of his students. The simple phrase saying that “the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides” was proven right before the Babylonians.Even if his school was one of the most famous of his era, Pythagoras still had many enemies because of his political and religious actions. As a result, his school was destroyed by his opponents, prompting his move to Italy.He spent the last years of his life teaching and traveling. His fame however, still created problems. Nonetheless, no matter how much doubt he was confronted with, nobody can deny his great contribution to philosophy and math.It wasn’t that people just got so swept up in the hypotenuse-finding craze that they started making up stories about Pythagoras—he encouraged them. Pythagoras directly told people that he was the son of a god and that he had been repeatedly reincarnated until he reached his current form.In a past life, Pythagoras claimed, he was the son of Hermes, who had offered Pythagoras any gift he wanted except for immortality. Pythagoras asked to retain his memories through each life and now could remember every person he had ever been. He had fought with Achilles in the Trojan War. He had worked as a humble fisherman. He had even been a beautiful courtesan who slept with powerful men.More than that, though, Pythagoras claimed that he could sense old souls in new bodies. Legend has it that he once saw a dog getting beaten on the streets and ran in the way to stop the blows. “Stop! Don’t beat it!” Pythagoras yelled. “It is the soul of a friend.” He had recognized its voice in the dog’s barking.Pythagoras was one of the first people in Western history to abstain from eating meat for moral reasons. Eating the dead, he taught his followers, polluted the body—and so they must never kill a living thing.His rules were a bit weird, though. You might remember that we mentioned earlier his sacrifice of oxen—and, yes, he did both. Like a vegan who eats fish and chicken, Pythagorean vegetarianism had some weird loopholes.The offerings he made were always inanimate,” the Greek writer Diogenes wrote in a biography of Pythagoras. Then Diogenes clarified: “Though some say that he would offer cocks, sucking goats, and porkers.” Still, Pythagoras drew the line somewhere. “But lambs,” Diogenes explained, “Never!”Pythagoras’s rules seemed every bit as weird to the Greeks as they do to us. During his time, the Greeks spread a joke about a Pythagorean who insisted that he never ate any living thing. After getting caught eating dog meat, the Pythagorean said, “Yes, but [I kill] them first, and so they are still not alive.The Pythagoreans might have had loopholes for meat, but that didn’t mean they could do whatever they wanted. Pythagoras had some incredibly strict and specific rules for just about everything—including which shoe to put on first.One must put the right shoe on first,” Pythagoras told his followers. And once your shoes were on, he said, “One must not travel on public roads.” He didn’t stop at footwear, though. Pythagoras weighed in on the five-second rule for food that falls on the floor, telling his followers never to “taste ye of what falls beneath the board.He was exceptionally strict about sex. Bodily fluids, Pythagoras seems to have believed, were part of a man’s soul. When a man expelled them, he gave up some of his strength. Pythagoras’s followers were taught to abstain from sex whenever possible. But if they couldn’t help themselves, he told them: “Keep to the winter for sexual pleasures, in summer, abstain. Silence, Pythagoras believed, was very important. Staying quiet was a way to learn self-control, and so he made sure that anyone who wanted to join his cult could do it. Anyone who signed up had to close his mouth and keep it shut for five years straight.In part, this was to help people stay pure. But there’s a lot of reason to believe that it had more to do with making sure they could keep secrets. Even in ancient Greece, calling yourself the son of god and getting people to worship numbers wasn’t exactly considered being a model citizen.The Pythagoreans tried to keep that part of their lives quiet. As a result, they wouldn’t let anyone into the fold unless the person proved that he could keep his mouth shut.

Rosa Pythagoras Emerging from the Underworld .It looks familiar enough in many ways, with the disciples greeting the man emerging from the tomb, and especially the fervent women rejoicing. (See it in more detail here). Except it is very much not what we think. The man returning from the dead is not Christ but Pythagoras, the genius and reputed miracle-worker who lived in the sixth century BC.Remembered today as a philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras was a mystic who believed in immortality and the reincarnation of the soul. He mocked the official religious teachings of his day, and one story recounts that he visited the underworld during his lifetime.

Most of the Greeks, though, didn’t understand the dark implications of these silent acolytes. The Greeks were just happy that a Pythagorean wasn’t going on about numbers for a change. Generally, people were more impressed by the quiet ones than the people who were allowed to talk.One of Pythagoras’s most famous followers was Hippasus. Legend has it that he was the first person to prove the existence of an irrational number—and he may have died for it.Hippasus developed a proof that showed that the square root of two was an irrational, never-ending number. This was more than just a major discovery—it was open rebellion. Pythagoras had taught that all numbers could be expressed as ratios of integers, and Hippasus had proven his divine teacher wrong.According to the legend, Hippasus showed his proof to Pythagoras while they were on a boat. In response, Pythagoras grabbed Hippasus, wrestled him to the side of the boat, and held his head underwater until he stopped moving. Then Pythagoras threw the lifeless body overboard, turned to the others aboard, and warned them never to tell a soul what had happened.That story is probably not true. It seems to be a twisted version of a Pythagorean fable that said Hippasus was drowned by the gods as punishment for disclosing the secret of irrational numbers to the world.But that story still reveals something creepy about the Pythagorean cult. They spread this story, it’s believed, as a parable—a warning telling their followers that if they shared the cult’s secrets with the world, they could expect a watery grave.There were two types of Pythagoreans: the akousmatikoi and the mathematikoi. The mathematikoi were Pythagoras’s closest and most trusted followers. He would meet with them in person and explain his theorems to them in detail. They were allowed to know the secrets of advanced math that were kept hidden from the rest of the world.They had to pay a heavy price for the privilege. To become a mathematikoi, a person had to give up meat, women, and all private possessions. From then on, their only loyalty was to Pythagoras.The rest were allowed to be akousmatikoi—followers who were never allowed to see Pythagoras’s face. When he spoke to them, Pythagoras would be hidden behind a veil like the Wizard of Oz. Nothing was explained to the akousmatikoi in any detail. They were merely expected to follow his rituals. They could not be trusted with the dangerous secrets of higher mathematics.Pythagoras believed the earth was round and that the sun, moon, and other planets had their own movements. He is most widely known for the Pythagorean theorem, which states that "a right-angled triangle the area of the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares of the other two sides," in other words, A2 + B2=C2.This theorem is believed to have been used by the ancient Babylonians and the Indians, although their use of this is based on evidence of the understanding of the principle, and not on recorded writings.However, due to the lack of recorded evidence of his life, some researchers believe that Pythagoras' important contributions may have actually been founded by his students, followers, or contemporaries, as his religion continued to spread for some time; his followers were known as Pythagoreans, hence the ideas being attributed to him.The highly-secretive nature of Pythagoras' school has made it difficult to discern what role he actually played in discovering the theorem.Popular belief holds that Pythagoras also made important contributions in medicine, music, astronomy, and divination.Pythagoras and his followers were important for their contributions to both religion and science. His religious teachings were based on the doctrine of metempsychosis, which held that the soul was immortal and was destined to a cycle of rebirths until it could liberate itself from the cycle through the purity of its life. A number of precepts were drawn up as inviolable rules by which initiates must live.Pythagoreanism differed from the other philosophical systems of its time in being not merely an intellectual search for truth but a whole way of life which would lead to salvation. In this respect it had more in common with the mystery religions than with philosophy. Several taboos and mystical beliefs were taught which sprang from a variety of primitive sources such as folk taboo, ritual, and sympathetic magic and were examples of the traditional beliefs that the Greeks continued to hold while developing highly imaginative and rational scientific systems.An important underlying tenet of Pythagoreanism was the kinship of all life. A universal life spirit was thought to be present in animal and vegetable life, although there is no evidence to show that Pythagoras believed that the soul could be born in the form of a plant. It could be born, however, in the body of an animal, and Pythagoras claimed to have heard the voice of a dead friend in the howl of a dog being beaten.The number of lives which the soul had to live before being liberated from the cycle is uncertain. Its liberation came through an ascetic life of high moral and ethical standards and strict adherence to the teachings and practices of the sect. Pythagoras himself claimed to remember four different lives. Followers of the sect were enjoined to secrecy, although the discussions of Pythagoras's teachings in other writers proved that the injunction was not faithfully observed.The Pythagoreans posited the dualism between Limited and Unlimited. It was probably Pythagoras himself who declared that number was the principle in the universe, limiting and giving shape to matter. His study of musical intervals, leading to the discovery that the chief intervals can be expressed in numerical ratios between the first four integers, also led to the theory that the number 10, the sum of the first four integers, embraced the whole nature of number.So great was the Pythagoreans' veneration for the "Tetractys of the Decad" (the sum of 1 + 2 + 3 + 4) that they swore their oaths by it rather than by the gods, as was conventional. Pythagoras may have discovered the theorem which still bears his name (in right triangles, the square on the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares on the other sides), although this proposition has been discovered on a tablet dating from the time of the Babylonian king Hammurabi. Regardless of their sources, the Pythagoreans did important work in systematizing and extending the body of mathematical knowledge.As a more general scheme, the Pythagoreans posited the two contraries, Limited and Unlimited, as ultimate principles. Numerical oddness and evenness are equated with Limited and Unlimited, as are one and plurality, right and left, male and female, motionlessness and movement, straight and crooked, light and darkness, good and bad, and square and oblong. It is not clear whether an ultimate One, or Monad, was posited as the cause of the two categories.As a result of their religious beliefs and their careful study of mathematics, the Pythagoreans developed a cosmology which differed in some important respects from the world views of their contemporaries, the most important of which was their view of the earth as a sphere which circled the center of the universe. The center of this system was fire, which was invisible to man because his side of the earth was turned from it. The sun reflected that fire; there was a counterearth closer to the center, and the other five planets were farther away and followed longer courses around the center. It is not known how much of this theory was attributable to Pythagoras himself. Later writers ascribe much of it to Philolaos (active 400 B.C.), although it circulated as a view of the school as a whole.The systematization of mathematical knowledge carried out by Pythagoras and his followers would have sufficed to make him an important figure in the history of Western thought. However, his religious sect and the asceticism which he taught, embracing as it did a vast number of ancient beliefs, make him one of the great teachers of religion in the ancient Greek world.