Pythagoras is an ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher, the founder of the Pythagorean school. Pythagoras - short biography
Pythagoras of Samos (570-490 BC) - ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician, founder of the religious and philosophical school of the Pythagoreans.
Pythagoras' parents came from the island of Samos. According to some sources, the scientist’s father was a stone cutter, and according to others, a rich merchant. Pythagoras' mother was from the noble family of Ancaeus, who was the founder of the Greek colony of Samos. According to legend, the birth of the scientist was predicted by Pythia in Delphi. Note that the name Pythagoras literally means “the one announced by the Pythia.” The scientist was born in Sidon Phoenician.
Ancient authors claim that Pythagoras communicated with many famous sages of their era (Greeks, Chaldeans, Persians, Egyptians). In particular, in his youth he went to Egypt, where he met the local priests. Some authors claim that he penetrated into mysteries that were forbidden to foreigners.
Then Pythagoras included Babylon among the captives of the Persian king Cambyses. Here he stayed for about 12 years until he returned to Samos at the age of 56. Ancient authors note that upon returning to his homeland, his compatriots recognized him as a sage.
But there is another version. In particular, according to Porfiry, the scientist left his homeland at the age of 40 because he did not agree with the tyrannical power of Polycrates. Thus, it is unknown whether the mathematician visited Babylon and Egypt. Although modern historians argue that Pythagoras could have left Samos not so much because of disagreements with the authorities, but rather out of a desire to preach his teachings. If we adhere to this opinion, then after leaving his homeland, Pythagoras settled in Crotona (Southern Italy). Here he found many followers who were attracted to his philosophy and way of life.
The disciples of Pythagoras formed a kind of brotherhood of initiates, which consisted of a caste of selected like-minded people who deified their teacher. For a long time he had enormous influence in the said Greek colony. But due to anti-Pythagorean sentiments in Croton, the philosopher was forced to move to Metapontus, where he died. Thus, there is a legend that the dejected Pythagoras starved himself to death.
The followers of Pythagoras tried to change the legislation in their cities. But the majority of the population did not share the ideals of the philosopher, which resulted in riots in Tarentum and Croton. Many Pythagoreans died in these skirmishes, while others scattered throughout Greece and Italy. Porphyry notes that Pythagoras himself died during the anti-Pythagorean rebellion in Metapontus.
Philosophical teachings of Pythagoras
Modern historians divide the teachings of Pythagoras into 2 parts:
- religious-mystical way of life;
- scientific approach to understanding the world.
For example, Aristotle characterizes Pythagoras as the founder of a semi-religious cult that prohibited eating beans. But Plato treated the mathematician with deep respect. In fact, Pythagoras created secret society, which set itself not only political goals, but also worked on moral and physical cleansing. In particular, the Pythagoreans believed that the soul moves from heaven into the body of an animal or human until it earns the right to return to heaven again.
Among the merits of the Pythagoreans, it is worth highlighting the promotion of the idea of quantitative laws of world development. Pythagoras believed that the basis of the universe is number. In his opinion, knowledge of the world consists of knowledge of the numbers that control it. As a result, the Pythagoreans developed various numerical ratios in many areas human activity.
Scientific achievements
Now Pythagoras is considered a great mathematician and cosmologist, but early sources do not mention such merits. For example, Iamblichus writes that the Pythagoreans often attributed own discoveries Pythagoras. In particular, the philosopher is given the authorship of a famous theorem. But many modern researchers are of the opinion that Pythagoras did not prove this theorem, but simply conveyed knowledge known in Babylon long before his birth. Some credit Pythagoras with the discovery that the Earth is a sphere. But Diogenes Laertius claims that such a judgment was expressed by Anaximander of Miletus, who taught Pythagoras in his youth. Nevertheless, the scientific merits of the Pythagorean school in cosmology and mathematics are indisputable.
Herodotus called Pythagoras “the greatest Hellenic sage.”
Pythagoras did not leave his own works; all information about his life and teachings is based on the works of his followers. The earliest sources about the teachings of Pythagoras were created 200 years after his death.
As a result of one of his speeches, Pythagoras acquired 2 thousand students. They, together with their families, formed a school where the laws and rules of the famous ancient mathematician were in effect.
Since Pythagoras believed that human souls can move into animals, he and his students adhered to vegetarianism. Although some of the scientist’s demands are now perceived as funny incidents. For example, the Pythagoreans did not allow swallows to build nests under the roofs of houses and could not touch white roosters.
There is a mug named after Pythagoras. It is also known as the "greed mug". In the center of this seemingly ordinary vessel is a small column. This mug can be filled to a certain level. If you pour it to the brim, then the entire contents of the vessel will flow out. Thus, the “greed mug” helps not to forget about a sense of proportion. This is one of the most popular Greek souvenirs.
One of the craters on the Moon was named after Pythagoras.
The philosopher's contemporary Heraclitus believed that Pythagoras presented ordinary knowledge and fraud as his own wisdom.
Pythagoras had a wife, Theano, a daughter, Mnya, and a son, Telaugus (according to another version, the daughter of Arignot and the son of Arimnest).
Pythagoras of Samos, ancient Greek philosopher, great initiate of the Earth, political and religious figure, mathematician, founder of Pythagoreanism. His main life concept is “Everything is a Number.” This is usually indicated in encyclopedias and his biographies.
But who Pythagoras was, who is now and who Pythagoras will be in the future remains a cosmic Mystery...
He is a most brilliant scientist, a great dedicated philosopher, a sage, the founder of the famous Pythagorean school and the spiritual teacher of a number of outstanding philosophers of world renown. Pythagoras became the founder of the teachings about Numbers, the Music of the celestial spheres and the Cosmos, and created the basis of monadology and the quantum theory of the structure of matter. He made discoveries of great importance in the field of such sciences as mathematics, music, optics, geometry, astronomy, number theory, superstring theory (Earthly monochord), psychology, pedagogy, ethics.
Pythagoras developed his philosophy on the basis of knowledge of the laws of the interrelations of the visible and invisible world, the unity of spirit and matter, on the concept of the immortality of the soul and its gradual purification through transmigration (the theory of incarnation). Many legends are associated with the name of Pythagoras, and his students were able to win fame for themselves and became outstanding people, thanks to whose works we became aware of the fundamentals of the teachings of Pythagoras, his sayings, practical and ethical advice, as well as the theoretical postulates and spiritual tales of Pythagoras.
Perhaps not every one of us can remember the Pythagorean theorem, but everyone knows the saying “Pythagorean pants are equal on all sides.” Pythagoras, among other things, was a rather cunning man. The great scientist taught all his Pythagorean students a simple tactic that was very beneficial for him: if you made discoveries, attribute them to your teacher. This may be a rather controversial judgment, but it is thanks to his students that Pythagoras is credited with a truly incredible number of discoveries:
In geometry: the famous and beloved Pythagorean theorem, as well as the construction of individual polyhedra and polygons.
In geography and astronomy: he was one of the first to express the hypothesis that the Earth is round, and also believed that we are not alone in the Universe.
In music: determined that sound depends on the length of the flute or string.
In numerology: in our time, numerology has become famous and quite popular, but it was Pythagoras who combined numbers with predictions for the future.
Pythagoras taught that both the beginning and the end of everything that exists lies in a certain abstract quantity, the so-called Monad. It represents the unknowable absolute emptiness, chaos, the ancestral home of all gods and at the same time contains the fullness of existence in the form of divine Light. The Monad, like ether, permeates all things, but is not located in any one of them. This is the sum of all numbers, which is always considered as an indivisible whole, like a unit.
The Pythagoreans depicted the Monad as a figure that consists of ten points - the so-called nodes. All these ten nodes, called tetractys by the Pythagoreans, create nine equilateral triangles between themselves, which personify the fullness of universal emptiness and the Life-giving Cross.
It is also believed that Pythagoras created the foundations of planimetry, introduced the widespread and mandatory use of evidence in geometry, and created the doctrine of similarity.
Pythagoras made all these discoveries more than two and a half thousand years ago! The discoveries of Pythagoras, like his faithful disciples, live and will live in the future.
Messages about Pythagoras, ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician, the creator of the Pythagorean school is described in this article.
Report on Pythagoras
Brief biography of Pythagoras
Pythagoras was born around 570 BC in Sidon, Phoenician, into the family of a rich merchant from Tire. Thanks to the financial status of his parents, the young man met many sages of that era and absorbed their knowledge like a sponge.
At the age of 18, Pythagoras left hometown and left for Egypt. There he stayed for 22 years, learning the knowledge of the local priests. When the Persian king conquered Egypt, the scientist was taken to Babylon, where he lived for another 12 years. He returned to his native land at the age of 56, and his compatriots recognized him as a sage.
Pythagoras the donkey of Southern Italy, the Greek colony - Crotone. Here he found many followers and founded his school. His students practically deified their founder and teacher. But the omnipotence of the Pythagoreans led to the outbreak of rebellions and Pythagoras moved to another Greek colony - Metapontus. This is where he died.
He was married to a woman, Theano, from whom a son, Telaugus, and a daughter, whose name is unknown, were born.
Features of the philosophical teachings of Pythagoras
The philosophical teaching of Pythagoras consists of two parts - a scientific approach to understanding the world and an occult way of life, preached by him. He reflected on the liberation of the soul through physical and moral purification through secret teachings. The philosopher founded mystical teaching about the cycle of the migration of the soul. The eternal soul, according to the scientist, moves from heaven into the body of an animal or a person. And it moves from body to body until the soul earns the right to return back to heaven.
Pythagoras formulated a number of instructions from his school - about behavior, circulation human lives, sacrifices, food and burials.
The Pythagoreans put forward the idea of quantitative patterns in the development of the world. And this, in turn, contributed to the development of physical, mathematical, geographical and astronomical knowledge. Pythagoras taught that the basis of the world and things is number. He developed numerical relationships that found applications in all human activities.
The biography of Pythagoras was already obscured early on, and over time it became more and more obscured by so many unhistorical legends and guesses, so many later elements were introduced into his teaching - especially since the emergence of neo-Pythagorean school and her widely used method of composing forged Pythagorean writings - that the most careful criticism is needed in order to isolate the true parts from the information that has reached us. With a significant degree of reliability, only a few main points can be established in the history of the Pythagorean school and its founder, and in relation to its teaching - only elements that are attested by authentic passages of Philolaus, messages of Aristotle and the instructions of later doxographers, the source of which we have the right to see in Theophrastus.
Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, was born on the island of Samos, where his Tyrrhenian ancestors Pelasgians, moved from Phliunt. Of the inaccurate, significantly diverging indications about the time of his life, apparently the closest to reality is information that probably has its source in Apollodorus. According to them, Pythagoras was born in 571-570 BC, arrived in Italy in 532-531 and died in 497-496 at the age of 75. Heraclitus already calls him the most learned man of his time (with a reservation: he “created for himself wisdom - much knowledge, evil arts”). But how and where Pythagoras obtained his knowledge is unknown to us. Indications from later authors that he undertook educational trips to the eastern and southern countries, come from unreliable witnesses, arose late and among suspicious circumstances - and therefore should not be considered information based on historical memories, but only guesses, the reason for which was the doctrine of the transmigration of souls and some Orthico-Pythagorean customs.
Pythagoras. Bust in the Capitoline Museum, Rome
The more ancient legend, by all indications, knew nothing even about Pythagoras’ stay in Egypt, which in itself does not contain anything impossible. The first mention of him is found in the magnificent speech of Isocrates, which itself does not claim historical veracity. Nothing is said here about the philosopher’s stay in Egypt. In relation to Plato and especially Aristotle, it is unlikely that they brought such an influential system as Pythagoreanism out of Egypt. The doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which Pythagoras allegedly learned in Egypt, was known to the Greeks before him, while it was alien to the Egyptian religion. Attempts to extract the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls from the Hindu teaching, which is similar to it, should also be considered unsuccessful.
It is more likely, although still not entirely certain, that Pythagoras’ teacher was Pherecydes. If the other news is that Pythagoras was a student of Anaximander (from Porphyria) - apparently based not on historical tradition, but on a simple guess, then nevertheless the relationship of Pythagorean mathematics and astronomy to the corresponding teachings of Anaximander testifies to Pythagoras’s acquaintance with the Milesian philosopher.
After Pythagoras began his activities in the Apennines, he found his main field in Lower Italy. He settled in the city of Crotone and founded a union here, which found many adherents among the Italic and Sicilian Greeks. A later tale depicts the matter as such that he acted in these places as a prophet and sorcerer, and that his school was a league of ascetics who lived on communist principles, submitting to the strict discipline of the order, abstaining from eating meat, beans and woolen clothing, and sacredly keeping secrets of the school. For historical analysis, the Pythagorean union is primarily one of the forms of the then organizations of religious mysteries: its focus was the “Orgies” mentioned by Herodotus; its main dogma was the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which Xenophanes already spoke about. Purity of life (Πυθαγόρειος τρόπος του βίου, “Pythagorean way of life”) was required of the initiates, which, however, according to the most reliable evidence, amounted to only a few and easily achievable abstinences. The Pythagorean union differed from all other similar phenomena in the ethical and reformist direction that Pythagoras gave to mystical dogmas and cult, the desire to instill in its members, following the example of Dorian “mores and views, physical and spiritual health, morality and self-control. In connection with this desire is not only the cultivation of many arts and knowledge, for example, gymnastics, music, medicine, but also scientific activity, in which the members of the union practiced, following the example of its founder; Even outsiders who did not belong to the union could sometimes participate in these activities.
Pythagorean hymn to the sun. Artist F. Bronnikov, 1869
The mathematical sciences of the Greeks until the beginning of the 4th century had the Pythagorean school as their main focus, and adjacent to them was that physical teaching, which among the Pythagoreans forms the essential content of their philosophical system. That the ethical reform which Pythagoras sought should immediately become political reform– for the Greeks of that era it was self-evident. In politics, the Pythagoreans, according to the whole spirit of their teaching, were defenders of Dorian-aristocratic institutions aimed at the strict subordination of the individual to the interests of the whole. However, this political position of the Pythagorean alliance early on gave rise to attacks against it, which prompted Pythagoras himself to move from Croton to Metapontum, where he ended his life. Later, after many years of tension, probably around 440–430 BC, the burning of the house in which the Pythagoreans met served as the signal for persecution that spread throughout Lower Italy. During them, many Pythagoreans died, and the rest fled in different directions. These fugitives, through whom Central Greece first became acquainted with Pythagoreanism, included Philolaus and Lysis, teacher of Epaminondas, who both lived in Boeotian Thebes. Was a student of the first Eurytus, whose students Aristoxenus calls the last Pythagoreans. At the beginning of the 4th century we meet Clinias in Tarentum, and soon after that the famous Archita, thanks to which Pythagoreanism again acquired power over a powerful state. But, apparently, soon after him Pythagoreanism, which merged into Ancient Academy with Platonism, it completely fell in Italy, although the Pythagorean mysteries survived and even became more widespread.
The man known to us as a great mathematician was also a philosopher, mystic, ascetic and the founder of a religious and philosophical school named after him. Pythagorean ideas had a significant influence on Plato, and through him on all of Western philosophy.
Herodotus claimed that Pythagoras was born in 570 BC on Samos, a Greek island in the eastern part Aegean Sea. His father was a jeweler according to some sources, and a merchant according to others. According to legend, his pregnant mother received a prediction from the Delphic Pythia that she would give birth to a beautiful, wise and useful child for humanity. She named her son after the fortune teller.
Diogenes Laertius reported that Pythagoras traveled a lot and visited not only Egypt, Arabia, Phenicia, Judea, Babylon, but even India. He collected knowledge about the nature of things and about secret mystical cults and gods. Plutarch claimed that during his visit to Egypt, Pythagoras studied with the priest of the god Anubis. Xenophanes wrote that he believed in the transmigration of souls. There is a well-known story when Pythagoras interceded on behalf of a dog that was being beaten, declaring that he recognized the voice of his dead friend in its cries. He shocked his listeners by claiming that he had taken part in the Trojan War.
Pythagoras made many discoveries. In addition to the famous theorem and number theory, he excelled in music - he proved the connection between the pitch of a sound and the length of a string. In astronomy, he created the theory of “music of the spheres” and recognized the sphericity of the Earth. The tenets of Pythagorean medicine were studied by Hippocrates. But along with scientific research Pythagoras practiced fortune telling and prophecy. He tied science and mysticism into a bizarre tangle, creating, in essence, a new religious movement.
Esoteric teachings, secret religious doctrines and customs, which undoubtedly occupied a prominent place in the Pythagorean system, are associated with the cult of Apollo. Moderation in everything was the main platform of the school. His students formed some kind of club, which included philosophical school, a religious brotherhood, and a political association.
The inhabitants of Croton, where Pythagoras settled after his travels, idolized him. They followed him unconditionally. Ancient authors told fantasy stories, as after the eloquent speeches of the philosopher, the Greeks became real ascetics.
Few people know that Pythagoras was the ideologist of the destruction of Sybaris, a city of sybarites full of luxury. Preaching his teachings, he called on the Crotonians to renounce excesses in defiance of the pampered sybarites. Conflicts between the two policies of Magna Graecia led to war and the Crotonians destroyed Sybaris. The disciples of Pythagoras claimed that he lamented this, but historians... historians do not believe them.
However, after the destruction of Sybaris, unrest began in Croton. The Pythagoreans imposed their order, but the inhabitants no longer wanted deprivation and abstinence. And so, on one tragic day for the Pythagoreans, the Crotonians set fire to their temple. Many adherents died, the survivors fled. Later, followers of the teaching organized something like a sect, but over time Pythagorean school ceased to exist.
As for the fate of Pythagoras himself, opinions differ. Some say that he died in the temple with his disciples, others that he fled by ship to Metapontum, and there he starved to death.
Remnants of his teaching have reached our days. Scientists recognize Pythagoras as a great mathematician and astronomer, thanks to whom the need for proof was introduced into mathematics, which gave it the status of a special discipline. Philosophers put Pythagoras on a par with Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius and Lao Tzu. Mystics revere him as its great initiate, clairvoyant and prophet.
