Geometry+&+Pythagoras

Pythagoras lived in the 500's BC, and was one of the first Greek mathematical thinkers. He spent most of his life in the Greek colonies in Sicily and southern Italy. He had a group of followers (like the disciples of Jesus) who followed him around and taught other people what he had taught them. The Pythagoreans were known for their pure lives (they didn't eat beans because they thought beans were not pure enough). They wore their hair long, and wore only simple clothing, and went barefoot. Both men and women were Pythagoreans. Pythagoreans were interested in philosophy, but especially in music and mathematics, two ways of making order out of chaos. Music is noise that makes sense, and mathematics is rules for how the world works.

Music was not the only field that Pythagoras considered worthy of study, in fact he saw numbers in everything. He was convinced that the divine principles of the universe, though imperceptible to the senses, could be expressed in terms of relationships of numbers. He therefore reasoned all the secrets of the universe are revealed by pure thought, and mathematics.

This eventually led to the famous saying that “all things are numbers.” Pythagoras himself spoke of square numbers and cubic numbers, and we still use these terms, but he also spoke of oblong, triangular, and spherical numbers. He associated numbers with form, relating arithmetic to geometry. His greatest contribution, the Pythagorean Theorem is a well known modern principle.