Pyth'Agoras was considered a philosopher, more than anything else. He was born on the island of Samos, Greece in 569BC. Various writings place his death between 500BC and 475BC in Meta-Pontum, Lucania, Italy. His father, Mnes'Archus, was a gem merchant. His mother's name was Pyth'Ais. Pyth'Agoras had two or three brothers.
Pyth'Agoras was well educated, and he played the 7 strings lyre throughout his lifetime, knew poetry and recited Homer. He was interested in philosophy, astronomy, music, the mysticism of numbers, and was greatly influenced by Ph'Erek'Ydes (philosophy), Th'Ales (astronomy), and Ana'Xim'Ander (phylosophy).
Pyth'Agoras left Samos for Egypt in about 535BC(35 years old) to study with the priests in the temples.
Ten years later, when Persia invaded Egypt, he was taken prisoner and sent to Babyl'On (now Iraq), where he met the Magoi, priests who taught him sacred rites. Iam'Blichus (250-330CE), a Syrian philosopher, wrote about Pyth'Agoras, "He also reached the acme of perfection in numbers and music and other sciences taught by the babylonians.. ."
In 520BC (49 years old), now a free man, left Babyl'On and returned to Samos, and sometime later began a school called "The Semicircle."His methods of teaching were not very popular with the leaders of Samos, and their desire for him to become involved in politics did not appeal to him, so he left.
In 518CE9 (51 years old), he settled in Crotona, a Greek colony in Southern Eastern coast of Italy, and founded a philosophical and religious school where his many followers lived and worked. The school lived by rules of behavior, including when they spoke, what they wore and what they ate. Many of the practices and beliefs of the society (secrecy, vegetarianism, fasting, silence, refusal to eat beans, refusal to wear animal skins, celibacy, self-examination, immortality and reincarnation) can be traced to the beliefs of Egyptian priests and were re-directed as "rules of life." They had no personal possessions and were strictly vegetarians . Another group of followers who lived apart from the school were allowed to have personal possessions and were not expected to be vegetarians. They all worked communally on discoveries and logical thinking. Both men and women were permitted to become members. In fact, several female Pyth'Agoreans became noted philosophers. For example, Ae'Sara of Lucania was known for her theory of the tri-part soul, which she believed consisted of the mind, spiritedness, and desire.
Pyth'Agoreans believed that all relationships of any kind could be reduced to mystic numbers in order to account for geometrical properties and purposes. He had long played the seven string lyre and learned how harmonious the vibrating strings sounded when the lengths of the strings were proportional to whole numbers, such as 2:1, 3:2, 4:3. He also realized that this knowledge could be applied to other musical instruments. From this viewpoint, the concept of number was developed, which became the dominant principle of all proportion, order, and harmony in the universe. Then, with the same principle, they found the existence of the "incommensurable" (irrational) numbers. It caused a scandal at the beginning, so serious that some members tried to suppress the knowledge of the existence of the newly found concept. By any means the ethics of the school was based on strict loyalty and secrecy.
The core of Pyth'Agorean philosophy developed primarily within religious concepts, such as: the soul was thought to reside in the brain, and was considered immortal. The soul was able to move from one being to another, or sometimes from a human into an animal, through a series of reincarnations called transmigration until it achieved the spiritual purification needed in order to continue its divine journey. Both mathematic and music were considered entities with enough power to achieve purification. Certain symbols have a mystical significance. Numbers have personalities,characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. They were not only symbols of reality, but also were the final substance of real things, known as "number mysticism." They held, for example, that One is the point, Two is the line, Three is the surface, and Four is the solid. Seven was considered the destiny that dominates human life because infancy ends there, and also because the number Seven was associated with the Seven Wandering Stars. the age of maturity began at age Fourteen, marriage occurred in the Twenty-First year, and Seventy years was the normal life span. The number Ten was identified as the perfect number because it was the sum of One, plus Two, plus Three, plus Four.
The world was understood an an entity that depends upon the interaction of opposites, such as male and female, lightness and darkness, warm and cold, dry and moist, light and heavy, fast and slow.
The Pyth'Agoreans deduced that any Triangle whose sides were in the ratio 3:4:5 was a right- angled triangle. The earlier Egyptians stated this empirical relationship and the desire to find the mathematical harmonies of all things led the Pyth'Agoreans to prove it. Today it is known as the Pyth'Agorean Theorem.
In Astronomy, the Pyth'Agorean were the first to consider the Earth as a sphere revolving with the other planets and the Sun around a universal central fire. Then planets were believed to exist in order to produce the number of Ten. They also recognized that the orbit of the Moon was inclined to the equator of the Earth, and were one of the first to accept that Venus was both the Evening Star and the Morning Star.
The Pyth'Agorean doctrine of numerology and number mysticism influence the developing of the idea that nature could be understood through mathematical concepts and science was extremely important for studying and understanding the physical world in which we live.
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