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Pythagoras and the World of Mathematics


Pythagoras of Samos most likely died around the year 475 BCE. The society in which Pythagoras lived made him teach in a society where secrecy was very important and information regarding what was discussed there was kept very much secret. As stated within the biography by the School of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of St Andrews, Scotland, "He is an extremely important figure in the development of mathematics yet we know relatively little about his mathematical achievements. Unlike many later Greek mathematicians, where at least we have some of the books which they wrote, we have nothing of Pythagoras's writings. The society which he led, half religious and half scientific, followed a code of secrecy which certainly means that today Pythagoras is a mysterious figure," (1). Regardless of the fact that information is scarce about the life of Pythagoras and his writing, we know that his teaching would create the basis for more advanced mathematics and would influence every single mathematician by his perception of numbers in an abstract way rather than literal.
             Pythagoras was a very well rounded man that made an impact not only in mathematical thought but also in various other subjects. One of these subjects was music in which he theorized a relationship between the movement of celestial bodies such as the sun, to music, not as an audible concept, but rather mathematical. This theory or concept came to be known as the "Harmony of the Spheres" and it would come to influence many great philosophers but was ultimately discarded in the Renaissance period of time. The "Harmony of the Spheres" was most likely his second most important contribution as described in the Stanford Encyclopedia, "Secondarily as a cosmologist, because of the striking view of a universe ascribed to him in the later tradition, in which the heavenly bodies produce "the music of the spheres" by their movements," (2).


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