Pythagoras of Samos | Biography

So little is known about the life of Pythagoras that some historians have suggested that such a person did not exist and that the name was for a society of people who studied the mystical properties of numbers. However, the majority of historians, who have based their theories on the works of the later Greek writers Plato (ca. 428 b.c.-ca. 348 b.c.) and Herodotus (ca. 484 b.c. -ca. 430 or 420 b.c.), believe that an individual named Pythagoras did indeed exist.

Believed to have been born on the island of Samos about 560 b.c., Pythagoras traveled extensively in Egypt and Babylon, absorbing the mathematical and mystical doctrines of these cultures. Pythagoras settled in the Greek colony of Croton in southern Italy, becoming the leader of a religious, scientific and philosophical brotherhood. Marked by secrecy and mysticism, the Pythagorean society often followed unique practices; for example, they forbade the poking of fire with an iron poker and the eating of beans.

With his goal being the moral reformation of society, Pythagoras created a school of learning, concentrating on mathematics and science. Fascinated by numbers, Pythagoras looked for numerical values and relationships in everything he saw. The numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 were especially valued because they added up to 10, which was considered a "perfect number " to the Pythagoreans. Despite their advanced knowledge of numbers, they recognized only whole numbers and fractions and dismissed the existence of irrational numbers. Therefore, when Hippasus (ca. 500 b.c.), one of the society members, discovered proof of the existence of irrational numbers, he created quite a scandal. According to legend, the Pythagoreans threw Hippasus overboard while at sea for the trouble he had caused. Pythagoras attempted to keep the discovery of irrational numbers a secret; members were reportedly banished from the society if they revealed the truth. Possibly due to his possible involvement in a colonial uprising, Pythagoras was driven from Croton, and fled to Metapontum, where he may have been murdered around 500 b.c. Pythagoreanism survived as a cult for centuries following its founder's death.

Many discoveries are owed to the Pythagorean society. Their methods of representing numbers as lines, triangles or squares of pebbles gave us the word calculate, based on the Latin word calculus, or pebble. Pythagoras's work in geometric principles produced the Pythagorean theorem: the square of the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides. More simply stated it allows us to find the length of a side of a right triangle if we know the length of the other two sides. However, historians believe that the theorem was not Pythagoras's discovery, and that he may have learned it from Egyptian mathematicians.

In medicine, the Pythagoreans believed that the blending of the opposites--hot-cold and wet-dry--in the human body was necessary to maintain health. Too much or too little of any one factor would produce sickness. Staunch believers in human reincarnation, they strove to achieve harmony and balance in all things. Their belief that everything was based on numbers was also evident in other aspects of Pythagorean civilization. They reduced astronomy and music to numerical patterns and studied them as mathematical subjects. In the sixth century, the Pythagoreans were the first to suggest that the Earth was spherical in shape and proposed the idea that the Earth, Moon and planets revolved around a central Sun.