![]() Thales, for instance, thought everything derived from water. Every major philosopher had a favorite idea for what sort of substance served as reality’s foundation. But in ancient times, nobody really knew anything about what reality is. That sounds crazy to modern minds taught that matter is made of atoms and molecules. Pythagoras believed that, at its root, reality was made from numbers. Subscribe The universe is made from numbers So even though Pythagoras basically established a religious cult, he and his followers still expanded the Greek quest to explain the cosmos. Of course, if your goal is to live in harmony with the universe, you need to know something about the universe. Guthrie wrote, philosophy ceases to be primarily about explaining nature but instead “becomes the search for a way of life whereby a right relationship might be established between the philosopher and the universe.” ![]() For Pythagoras, the historian of Greek philosophy W.K.C. There he initiated a new phase of ancient science, mixing religion, music and math in a cult devoted to living in harmony with nature. He may even have spent time in the city of Miletus (not far from Samos) to study with the aging Thales, the founder of the ancient Greek effort to explain the world rationally.Īround the age of 40 or so, Pythagoras headed west to southern Italy, settling in the Greek colony town of Croton. He traveled widely, to Egypt and Babylonia and perhaps even Persia, to learn how math was used in those ancient cultures. on Samos, an island in the Eastern Mediterranean near the coast of present-day Turkey. As the historian Geoffrey Lloyd noted, “The Pythagoreans were … the first theorists to have attempted deliberately to give the knowledge of nature a quantitative, mathematical foundation.” It was Pythagoras who turned math from a mere tool for practical purposes into the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe. ![]() And the first of those Greeks to seriously put math to use for that purpose was the mysterious religious cult leader Pythagoras of Samos. Not until ancient Greek philosophers began to seek scientific explanations for natural phenomena (without recourse to myths) did anybody bother to wonder how math would help. ![]()
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