PYTHAGOREAN THEORY

Pythagorean Theory

Pythagorean Theory

Life and Background

Pythagoras is considered as the first genuine mathematician of the world. He was born in about 569 BC in Samos, Ionia. He lived in a society that was deeply religious and very secretive in nature and used to maintain secrecy about their most of the knowledge and practices and never wrote whatever they discovered.

Mr. J. J. O'Connor and E. F. Robertson in their well-researched article explained his life history:

“Pythagoras spent his early years in Samos but travelled widely with his father. Little is known of Pythagoras' childhood. There were, among his teachers, three philosophers who were to influence Pythagoras while he was a young man. One of the most important was Pherekydes, who many describe as the teacher of Pythagoras. The other two philosophers, who were to influence Pythagoras, and to introduce him to mathematical ideas, were Thales and his pupil Anaximander, who both lived on Miletus.” (O'Connor and Robertson, 1999)

In about 535 BC Pythagoras went to Egypt. In 525 BC Cambyses II, the king of Persia invaded Egypt. Pythagoras was taken prisoner and taken to Babylon. In about 520 BC Pythagoras left Babylon and returned to Samos.

He was the head of the society with an inner circle of followers known as mathematikoi. Pythagoras influenced a group of early Greek scientific and religious thinkers, the Pythagoreans. They believed that the soul was immortal and separable from the body. Because they believed that the soul was reincarnated in different animal bodies, they practiced vegetarianism. The group was almost cult-like in that it had symbols, rituals and prayers. In addition, Pythagoras believed that "Number rules the universe," and the Pythagoreans gave numerical values to many objects and ideas. These numerical values, in turn, were endowed with mystical and spiritual qualities (Heath and Euclid, 1908).

Pythagoras made a journey to Crete shortly after his return to Samos to study the system of laws and founded a philosophical and religious school in Croton. He was interested in the principles of mathematics, the concept of number, the concept of a triangle or other mathematical figure and the abstract idea of a proof (History of Math., 1996).

Pythagoras studied properties of numbers, which would be familiar to mathematicians today, such as even and odd numbers, Triangular numbers, perfect numbers etc. He died in about 475 BC”

He believed that numbers are the representations of particular shapes. For example Numbers 10, 15 and 6 represented triangles since they can be arranged in equilateral triangles. Many believe that this ideology led to the discovery of Pythagoras theorem. He also thought that each number represented a particular character. (Like 3 was a masculine character).

A Man of Mathematics

Although Pythagoras was not the best known Greek mathematician, he made many contributions to the way we use math today. Pythagoras is credited with inventing the Pythagorean Theorem. He also founded the Pythagorean brotherhood. Pythagoras also invented a lot of number patterns. Plato and Aristotle were influenced by Pythagoras's way of thinking. Pythagoras was a Greek religious leader who made huge ...