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Pythagoras
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Pythagoras is considered to be the first real mathematician. As an extremely important Greek philosopher and mathematician and founder of the Pythagorean School, but very few information is known about him and his life. The Pythagorean view of the world consisted of a belief that numbers were the keys to the various qualities of mankind and matter. In the Pythagorean view, everything was composed of numbers, the explanation for any objects existence could only be found in numbers. This was a completely novel concept, because at that time, numbers existed for practical purposes only, as a device for solving problems in calendar construction, building and commerce. Pythagoreans were the first who saw a number as an idea, important in itself.
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Born on the island of Samos, Pythagoras was the son of Mnesarchus. He fled to southern Italy to escape the tyranny of Polycrates, who came to power about 538, and he is said to have traveled to Egypt and Babylon. He and his followers became politically powerful in Croton in southern Italy, where Pythagoras had established a school for his newly formed sect. It is probable that the Pythagoreans took positions in the local government in order to lead men to the pure life which their teachings set forth. Eventually... a rival faction launched an attack on the Pythagoreans at a gathering of the sect, and the group was almost completely annihilated. Pythagoras either had been banished from Croton or had left voluntarily shortly before this attack.
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Pythagoras had a profound influence on Plato (c.427.-c.347 B.C.), later philosophers, and musicians, and artist. Even the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1885-1961) was interested in Pythagoras' thought in his youth. Heraclitus (fl. c.500 B.C.), a younger philosopher, said that Pythagoras "practised investigation most of all men, and having chosen out these treatises, he made a wisdom of his own - much learning and bad art." Plato wrote in Republic, that Pythagoras "wasn't only held inextremely high regard for his teachings during his lifetime, but his successors even now call their way of life Pythagorean". Aristotle's work on the Pythagoreans, which has not survived, was based on Philolus' book. In the first century B.C. Publius Nigidus Figulus founded the Neopythagoreanist school of philosophy.
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In 508 BC, Pythagoras had a dispute with a Cylon (who was working in the marketing department) over the leadership structure of the Pythagoreans. Unable to get support from his superiors within the company, Pythagoras took matters into his own hands and killed the Cylon on November 18th, inadvertently precipitating a long and unpleasant war.
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Pythagoras left no written works. A first-rate technical book, J. A. Philip, Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism (1966), separates the valid from the spurious among the legends that surround Pythagoras and his views. An excellent and thorough treatment of the evidence for his life and teachings is in W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy (3 vols., 1962-1969). A good account of Pythagoras and his followers is in Kathleen Freeman, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers (1946; 3d ed. 1953), and G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (1962). Briefer treatments of the Pythagoreans and the intellectual currents of their time are in the standard histories of Greek literature, such as Albin Lesky, A History of Greek Literature (trans. 1966), or in accounts of Greek philosophy, such as John Burnet, Greek Philosophy (1914).
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Pythagoras most likely traveled to Egypt with the intention of learning the sacred rights and secrets of the region's religious sects. He was eventually accepted at Diospolis, where he studied for at least a decade. In 525 BC the Persians invaded Egypt and Pythagoras was taken captive to Babylon. According to his Roman biographer Porphyry, Pythagoras studied under the sage Zaractas, from whom he learned astrology and the use of drugs for purifying the mind and body. He was ... initiated into Zoroastrianism and his famous Phythagorian theorum probably had a Babylonian origin. Pythagoras returned to Samos and tried to teach, but soon left forever and founded a religious community in Croton, Italy.
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