Pythagoras born and died

Pythagoras education
What was pythagoras famous for
Pythagoras philosophy

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Scientist of the Day - Pythagoras of Samos

Imagined portrait of Pythagoras of Samos, engraving in The History of Philosophy, by Thomas Stanley, 1687 (Linda Hall Library)

Pythagoras, an early Greek social reformer, religious thinker, and possible mathematician, was born on the island of Samos, just off the coast of Ionia, sometime around 570 BCE. We know very little about him, except that he left Samos at the age of 40 or so and moved to the Greek colony of Croton in what was then Magna Graecia, and is now the boot of Italy. He founded a religious brotherhood, bound to secrecy, and taught metempsychosis, the migration of souls after death, to his followers. The brotherhood also adhered to strict dietary rules. The Pythagoreans, as they were called, later came to advocate the importance of number and mathematics, and Pythagoras himself may have introduced those ideas, but we really don’t know. Most scholars of Pythagoras seem to feel that at least some of the passion that Pythagoreans had for numbers and harmony must have come down from the great man himself.

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Pythagoras

1. The Pythagorean Question

What were the beliefs and practices of the historical Pythagoras? This apparently simple question has become the daunting Pythagorean question for several reasons. First, Pythagoras himself wrote nothing, so our knowledge of Pythagoras’ views is entirely derived from the reports of others. Second, there was no extensive or authoritative contemporary account of Pythagoras. No one did for Pythagoras what Plato and Xenophon did for Socrates. Third, only fragments of the first detailed accounts of Pythagoras, written about 150 years after his death, have survived. Fourth, it is clear that these accounts disagreed with one another on significant points. These four points would already make the problem of determining Pythagoras’ philosophical beliefs more difficult than determining those of almost any other ancient philosopher, but a fifth factor complicates matters even more. By the third century CE, when the first detailed accounts of Pythagoras that survive intact were written, Pythagoras had come to be regarded, in some circles,

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Pythagoras

Greek philosopher (c. 570 – c. 495 BC)

"Pythagoras of Samos" redirects here. For the Samian statuary, see Pythagoras (sculptor).

For other uses, see Pythagoras (disambiguation).

Pythagoras of Samos^[a] (Ancient Greek: Πυθαγόρας; c. 570 – c. 495 BC)^[b] was an ancient IonianGreek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the West in general. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend; modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle.

In antiquity, Pythagoras was credited with many mathematical and scientific discoveries, including the Pythagorean theorem, Pythagorean tuning, the five regular solids, the Theory of Proportions, the sphericity of the