Pythagoras was born around 580 BC on the island of Samos, but of his youth,
little is known. Certainly he was influenced by the Greek philosophers of his
day, and educated in the Greek tradition. He is believed to have been influenced
by Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. It is reported that he went or was sent
to Egypt and learned many things there, and that he was taken prisoner by he
followers of Cambyses, and brought to Babylon, where he learned from the Magi: the
Persian Preistly Caste. These were the followers of Zoroaster, who guard the holy
fires of Ahura Mazda.

Later, he resided in Kroton (now Crotona), in southen Italy, and it is
thought here that his ideas reached full expression, it is probably here that he
founded the Pythagorean Brotherhood, and it was here that his political views
became popular. Pythagoras is credited with being the first 'pure mathematician',
and he revered numbers and numerical relationships, seeing them as being the
essence of the material world around us.

He said: "The world is built upon the
power of numbers." But Pythagoras was not only a mathamatician, he was trained in
the Greek way of thought, which taught that people should persue many interests.
Pythagoras was very interested in all aspects of the world, and he and his
followers influenced, and often revolutionized geometry, algebra, music theory,
acoustics, and astronomy, literature, religious thought, and magical works.

Pythagoras believed that reality was ordered. That there was a fundamental
order to the cosmos, and that everything was intended to follow an archetype of
perfection. There was order to Music, Astronomy, Mathematics and Numbers, and
Ethics and Society. Pythagoras believed that reality was fundamentally
mathematical in nature and that numbers controlled and made up the essence of what
we experience every day. He founded the Pythagorean Brotherhood, dedicated to the
reformation of life to a new standard of morality.

They were strongly religious
and believed that it was possible for the soul to achieve union with the divine,
and that symbols could have mystical significance and powers. He believed that
the forms of nature could be described and generated using integers, and ratios of
integers (whole numbers having values such as 1, 2. 3, and 1/2, 2/3, 3/4...

They
saw a parallelism between the creation of the world from void and nothing and the
beginning of numbers with the Zero, with the One appearing in the void, and giving
rise to all other numbers.

Pythagoras also believed that the dynamics of the
universe derived from the interactions of opposites, which perhaps derived from
his interactions with Zoroastrian thought.

The Pythagorean Brotherhood was dedicated to the reformation of life to a
new standard of morality. The brotherhood was strongly religious and believed
that it was possible for the soul to achieve union with the divine, and that
symbols could have mystical significance and powers. Aristotle tells us: "For as
the Pythagoreans say, the all and all things are defined by threes; for end and
middle and beginning constitute the number of the all, and also the number of the
triad."

The Pythagoreans noted that the sum of the first four numbers (1+2+3+4) was
10, which could be symbolized by an equilateral triangle with three units of
length on a side. They called this triangle the Tetraktys which means
approximately 'fourness'.

It has been also referred to as 'the sacred decad'.
Pythagoras noted its correspondence to the end points of the: point (1), line (2),
triangle (3), and tetrahedron (4), as measuring a position, a magnitude, an area,
and a region of space.

They were also very interested in numbers formed by geometrically expanding
simple geometric arrangements of dots or numbers. A 'Triangular" arrangement of
dots gave 'Triangular" Numbers: Triangular numbers were built by creating an
equilateral triangle with equally spaced dots, and counting the total number of
dots generated in such a way. Note that the revered value of 10 is a Triangular
number. The Pythagoreans also worked with 'Square' numbers (1, 4, 9, ...) and
Pentagonal numbers, and theorized about polygonal numbers. They noted that the
sum of any two adjacent 'Triangular Numbers' was a square number, and used
diagrams of square numbers (which were called 'gnomons') to derive many
interesting relationships. Note that each 'row' of sequential numbers in the
Gnomon shown here contains an odd number of elements, and that in this way they
generate all of the odd numbers. It is believed that it was through working with
these relationships, that Pythagoras was able to prove the Pythagorean Theorem.
It has been shown that every integer number is either a triangular number, or a
sum of 3 or less triangular numbers.

factors:
6 = 1 + 2 + 3,
28 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14,
496 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 31 + 62 + 124 + 248
8128 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 64 + 127 + 254 + 508 + 1016 + 2032 + 4064

The Pythagorean Theorem is named after Pythagoras: This theorem holds that for any right triangle, the square of the length of the long side is equal to the sum of the squares of the shorter sides. Pythagoras and the pythagoreans were not the first to be aware of this relationship, but they are believed to be the first to prove it, and at this point, their name is associated with it, and being taught to every school child.

Not that Pythagoras was not a brilliant man, and his
followers intelligent and great contributors, but he might not think that this was
his greatest contribution.

Pythagoras 'discovered' irrational numbers (non-repeating decimals that could not be expressed as fractions), and this presented a problem for the Pythagoreans, controverting their belief that everything could be expressed as simple ratios of the integers.

They must have somehow been able to accept a certain amount of
'irrationality' as the Pythagorean Theorem generates irrational numbers in many of
its solutions. The Pythagoreans also derived the area of a circle using a concept
of a large number of infinitesimally small triangles (not so far from modern
calculus).

Comparing musical notes to the Tetraktys Pythagoras discovered that the
intervals and basic harmonies of the musical scale correspond to the lengths of
the vibrating strings, which he expressed by the ratios 1:2, 2:3 and 3:4. The
most pleasing of harmonies are those formed by differences of whole numbers. A
note an octave above a particular note requires twice the length of string (2/1 -