PYTHAGORAS

Pythagoras

Pythagoras

Introduction

Pythagoras of Samos was an important Greek philosopher, mathematician, geometer, and theorist of music. Is the main founder of Greek mathematics and created a robust system for the science of celestial bodies, which made sure with all the arithmetic and geometric proofs. Born on the date we do not know, but speculated that it is between 580 to 572 BC and as the preferred place of birth supplied by the Isle of Samos (Kahn, 2001). He died in the Italian Metapontis' bleacher in old age, around 500 to 490 BC. It was Pythagoras who discovered that there was a numerical relationship between tones sounding "harmonics" and was the first to realize that music, being one of the essential means of communication and pleasure, could be measured by reason of integers. We know that the sound produced when you play a chord depends on the length, thickness and tension of it. We understand that any of these variables affect the frequency of vibration of the string. What is Pythagoras discovered that by dividing the string in certain proportions was capable of producing sounds pleasant to the ear. That was a wonderful confirmation of his theory. Numbers and beauty were one. The physical and emotional world could be described with simple numbers, and there was a harmonious relationship between all the perceptible phenomena.

Thesis Statement

The valuable contributions made by Pythagoras in mathematics are contemporary even though many centuries have passed.

Discussion

Contributions of Pythagoras

Pythagoras and his followers contributed a lot in the field of mathematics and music. They partitioned mathematics into four divisions: numbers absolute (arithmetic, what is now known as number theory), magnitudes in motion (astronomy), magnitudes at rest (geometry) and numbers applied (music). For centuries, this constituted the essential and adequate course of study.

Pythagoras also made contributions in the theory of numbers. He used to deal with the problems that majorly include polygonal numbers, ratio and proportion, factoring digits, and numerical series. Most of these mathematical pursuits were treated geometrically. For Pythagoreans, numbers had different personalities. They could be masculine or feminine, beautiful or ugly, perfect or incomplete (McKnight & Hess, 2008). They considered 10 as perfect because if you add the first four numbers (1+2+3+4) they would equal 10. The first four numbers symbolized the harmony of the spheres, as well as represented the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water). The theorem named for Pythagoras was most certainly known to the Egyptians and perhaps other early civilizations, but probably only in special cases that were used in surveying and building. It was Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans who gave a formal proof of the proposition, which may be stated as follows: “The Square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the remaining two sides.” This is probably the best-known mathematical theorem of all time.

A very important discovery made by Pythagoras is the numerical interpretation of the universe. By measuring the appropriate length of a string mono chord, ...