SubscribePythagoras is one of the most interesting and puzzling men in history. Not only are the traditions concerning him an almost inextricable mixture of truth and falsehood, but even in their barest and least disputable form they present us with a very curious psychology. He may be described, briefly, as a combination of Einstein and Mrs. Eddy. He founded a religion, of which the main tenets were the transmigration of souls and the sinfulness of eating beans. His religion was embodied in a religious order, which, here and there, acquired contol of the State and established a rule of the saints. But the unregenerate hankered after beans, and sooner or later rebelled.
"Most people think of Pythagoras as a scientist and mathematician, but the best recent scholarship suggests that he was neither of these and was most of all an expert on the fate of the soul after death and religious ritual. Heraclitus says that Pythagoras 'engaged in historia more than all men.' The focus of my paper is what is meant by the word historia. It is, in fact, the origin of the English word 'history.' Some scholars have argued that, at the time of Heraclitus, it meant "scientific research," and have thus used Heraclitus as evidence that Pythagoras was engaged in scientific and mathematical research. My paper examines the early use of the term historia and shows that while it refers to active inquiry, usually by asking questions of others, it does not usually refer to scientific research and can include inquiry into myths and religious practices. Thus, this important early reference to Pythagoras by Heraclitus does not show that Pythagoras was a scientist or mathematician, and Heraclitus' use of historia in describing Pythagoras is consistent with the other early evidence, which suggests that Pythagoras was primarily an expert on religious ritual and the founder of a way of life."There are other early or contemporary mentions of Pythagoras, including by Xenophanes--this book (starting on p. 48) examines a number of them.
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No primary sources about Pythagoras have survived. This article describes the classical interpretation of Pythagoras, which is based on a small set of texts written between 150 AD and 450 AD. As these texts were written 600 to 1000 years after Pythagoras is said to have lived, their accuracy is uncertain.
It is postulated that the classical Pythagoras did not exist prior to these biographies: many of the discoveries and life details they attributed to Pythagoras may have been those of other Pythagoreans, if not fiction. This would explain the lack of reference to a man Pythagoras until 150 AD, given that he would have been of interest to contemporary philosophers (Aristotle referred to the so-called Pythagoreans). It is suggested that the mathematical significance of the early Pythagoreans (pre-450 BC) has been exaggerated (with the exception of their theory of harmonics), and that the Pythagoreans were an Orphic-like cult with an emphasis on numerology who only later evolved into serious mathematicians as geometry became popular across Greece.
posted by zippy at 7:17 PM on February 14