On Pythagoras
How much do we know about Pythagoras? What did Plato and Aristotle say about him? Since I'm teaching Physics this year (at least for now), I started reading Aristotle's Physics . We'll see how long it will hold my attention. Anyway, I ran across this interesting paragraph in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy : The Pythagorean question, then, is how to get behind this false glorification of Pythagoras in order to determine what the historical Pythagoras actually thought and did. In order to obtain an accurate appreciation of Pythagoras' achievement, it is important to rely on the earliest evidence before the distortions of the later tradition arose. The popular modern image of Pythagoras is that of a master mathematician and scientist. The early evidence shows, however, that, while Pythagoras was famous in his own day and even 150 years later in the time of Plato and Aristotle, it was not mathematics or science upon which his fame rested. Pythagoras wa...