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See also: Thales of Miletus 22–23 ■ Siddhartha Gautama 30–33 ■ Heraclitus 40 ■ Plato 50–55 ■ René Descartes 116–23
surprising that he should approach
philosophical thinking in a
scientific and mathematical way.
The Pythagorean academy
Pythagoras was also, however, a
deeply religious and superstitious
man. He believed in reincarnation
and the transmigration of souls, and
he established a religious cult, with
himself cast as a virtual messiah, in
Croton, southern Italy. His disciples
lived in a collective commune,
following strict behavioral and
dietary rules, while studying his
religious and philosophical theories.
The Pythagoreans, as his disciples
were known, saw his ideas as
mystical revelations, to the extent
that some of the discoveries
attributed to him as “revelations”
may in fact have come from others
in the community. His ideas were
recorded by his students, who
included his wife, Theano of Crotona,
and daughters. The two sides ofTHE ANCIENT WORLD
Pythagoras Little is known about Pythagoras’s
life. He left no writings himself,
and unfortunately, as the Greek
philosopher Porphyry noted in his
Vita Pythagorae, “No one knows
for certain what Pythagoras told
his associates, since they observed
an unusual silence.” However,
modern scholars believe that
Pythagoras was probably born on
the island of Samos, off the coast
of modern-day Turkey. As a young
man, he travelled widely, perhaps
studying at the Milesian School,
and probably visiting Egypt, which
was a centrer of learning. At
the age of about 40, he set up acommunity of around 300 people
in Croton, southern Italy. Its
members studied a mixture of
mystical and academic studies,
and despite its collective nature,
Pythagoras was clearly the
community’s leader. At the age
of 60, he is said to have married
a young girl, Theano of Crotona.
Growing hostility toward the
Pythagorean cult eventually
forced him to leave Croton, and
he fled to Metapontum, also in
southern Italy, where he died
soon after. His community had
virtually disappeared by the end
of the 4th century BCE.Pythagoras’s beliefs—the mystical
and the scientific—seem to be
irreconcilable, but Pythagoras
himself does not see them as
contradictory. For him, the goal
of life is freedom from the cycle
of reincarnation, which can be
gained by adhering to a strict
set of behavioral rules, and by
contemplation, or what we would
call objective scientific thinking.
In geometry and mathematics he
found truths that he regarded ❯❯Number is the
ruler of forms.Number is the
ruler of ideas.So if we
understand number
and mathematical
relationships......we come to
understand the
structure of
the cosmos.Mathematics is
the key model
for philosophical
thought.Everything in the
universe conforms
to mathematical
rules and ratios.