Body Text
Pythagoras of Samos, was an Ionian (Greek) mathematician and philosopher and the founder of the mystic - scientific society known as the Pythagoreans.
Legendary presocratic philosopher whose followers studied mathematics, astronomy, and music in their pursuit of lives of harmony with the natural world. The work of the Pythagoreans is known to us only through fragmentary reports in the writings of other philosophers. According to Aristotle, for example, the Pythagoreans held that the ultimate constituents of all material objects are numbers, perhaps understood as geometrical points. Apparently they also held with religious devotion that souls are naturally immortal and therefore transmigrate at death to other human or animal bodies.
According to Iamblichus of Thales, he advised Pythagoras to go to Memphis in Egypt to study with the priests who were renowned for their wisdom. It may have been in Egypt where he learned some geometric principles which inspired his theory that is now called ‘Pythagorean Theorem’.
He is further credited (in the west) with being ‘the father of numbers’ and made some contributions to philosophy and religious teaching. Yet because of so much legend, obfuscation clouds his work (even more than with the other pre-Socratics), so one can say little with much confidence about his life and teachings. We do know; however, that Pythagoras and his students believed that everything was related to mathematics and, through mathematics, everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic patterns or cycles.
Pythagoras was one of the first to speculate that human life begins with a blend of male and female fluids, or semens, originating in body parts. This idea thus gave rise to the idea of genetics, requiring a blend of the male and female bodies to form new life.
He opened his school to male and female students alike and those who joined the inner circle of Pythagoras's society called themselves the Mathematikoi. While they lived in the school, they owned no personal possessions, observed strict initiations and were required to assume a fully vegetarian diet. Those other students who lived in neighboring areas, but were not part of the ‘inner circle’, were known as Akousmatics, and these students were permitted to eat meat and own personal belongings. Having pure and impure streams of students likely gave rise to various tensions, which ultimately contributed to his murder.
