The Ungenerated Seven as an Index to Pythagorean Number Theory

Author(s): Grace Murray Hopper

Source: The American Mathematical Monthly , Aug. - Sep., 1936, Vol. 43, No. 7 (Aug. -
Sep., 1936), pp. 409-413
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Mathematical Association of
America

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410 QUESTIONS, DISCUSSIONS, AND NOTES [Aug.-Sept.,

meaningless. On the score of primality it differs in no respect from 3 and 5. If

by generation is meant addition its claim to uniqueness is even less founded.
Yet when we turn for illumination to the writers who repeat the tradition we
are faced with a conspiracy of silence. Philo, in fact, is so far from offering an
explanation of his assertion that he proceeds to generate 7 by addition in all
possible ways: "The number 7 consists of 1 and 2 and 4 * for it (7) is divided
first of all into the number 1 and the number 6; then into the 2 and the 5; and
last of all into the 3 and the 4 * . Every organic body has 3 dimensions, length,
depth, and breadth; and 4 boundaries, the point, the line, the superficies, and
the solid; and by these, when combined, the number 7 is made up."* Either
Philo is exhibiting a quite unaccustomed reserve or else he is himself at a loss
to justify the 'virginity' of 7.
Perhaps the clue lies in the categorical statement of Clement of Alexandria:
"For neither by adding to another within 10 is 7 produced nor when added to
any number within 10 does it make up any of them."t Here is the most definite
statement of the problem. 'Generation' is explicitly defined as addition and
still the isolation of 7 is maintained. Clearly some additive process other than
the usual arithmetical addition is indicated. At the same time the failure of
the Neo-pythagoreans to clarify the tradition which they have received inti-
mates that the advance of mathematical knowledge had here obscured some
more ancient mathematical procedure.
The necessity of using the works of Nichomachus, Porphyrius, Iamblichus,
and Proclus, undoubtedly influenced by the Alexandrian schools, has presented
to the mathematical historian the seemingly impossible task of sifting out from
the later material that portion of the number theory directly attributable to
Pythagoras and his immediate followers. Yet the internal evidence of the tradi-
tion of the virgin number, baffling as it seems to later writers, is perhaps in it-
self the key to the lost Pythagorean modus operandi. For it is possible to set up
a completely consistent explanation of the Athena-like qualities of 7-and that
by considering numbers only as geometric entities, spatial and concrete.
According to this principle the geometric figures and the numbers are
divinely and inextricably linked. One, the monad, is not a number. It is the
principle of 'sameness,' of stability, right, equality, light. In eternal opposition
is the dyad, the principle of 'otherness,' mutability, diversity, inequality, dark-
ness.t Itself not a number, it is the link between the monad and numbers.?
Three then is the first number in the Pythagorean sense, "for as rennet curdles
flowing milk by its peculiar creative and active faculty, so the unifying force of
the monad advancing upon the dyad, source of every movement and breaking

* Philo, ibid, xxxi-xxxii; Works, I, 27-9.

t Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, VI, 16.
t Porphyrius, "Life of Pythagoras," 38, 49, in Guthrie, 141, 145.
? An arithmetic "proof" of this is offered by Proclus in his commentary on Euclid. For 1 the
double is greater than the square, 1 + 1 > 1 X 1; for 2, 2 +2 = 2 X 2; whereas for all successive num-
bers, 3+3<3X3, etc.

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19361 QUESTIONS, DISCUSSIONS, AND NOTES 411

down, infixed a bound, and a form, that is, number upon the triad; for this is the
beginning of actual number."* Three is the first number because number is
limited by form and the triangle is the first plane figure.
This triad becomes the underlying base of all corporeal things. It is the
"most original form of plane number"t and the "absolute principle of genera-
tion of begotten things.": In this connection it is of further importance to
note the isolation of one specific triangle and that not the equilateral as might
have been expected. Proclus quotes Philolaus as saying, "the right angled
triangle is the beginning of all figures and of all qualities."'7 Philo observes that
"the rectangular triangle, which is the beginning of all qualities consists of the
numbers 3 and 4 and 5,"? and is lost in admiration of "that holy number of 50,
being the power of a rectangular triangle which is the foundation of the creation
of the universe."II
Smith? tells us that this triangle was known in ancient Egypt long before
the time of Pythagoras. It is mentioned in a papyrus of the twelfth Dynasty
(c. 2000 B.C.). According to Plutarch's conjecture, "the Egyptians called it the
most perfect of triangles, because they likened the nature of the universe
principally to that."**
Just as 3 defines the first plane figure, so to 4 is assigned the tetrahedron,
the first of solid figures. Thus the first plane number 3 and the first solid number
4, the first odd or masculine number and the first even or feminine number,
unite under the form of the right triangle to produce 5, the hypotenuse and 6,
the area. So Plutarch: "Now in that triangle the perpendicular consists of 3
parts, the base of 4, and the subtense of 5, its square being equal in value with
the squares of the two that contain it. We are therefore to take the perpendicu-
lar to represent the male property, the base female, and the subtense that which
is produced by them both."tt In this manner 5 becomes the number of marriage,
and 6, the area of this generative triangle is similarly related to the idea of
generation.
The number 8 defines the cube, the second solid figure, while 9, the square
of 3, is the first odd square, both familiar elementary forms. But 7 and 7 alone
is unrelated to the elementary geometric forms and is ungenerated by the mem-
bers of the cosmic triangle. It is indeed the number par excellence of the mistress
of Athens.

* Theologumena Arithmetica, ed. Ast, 8, quoted in F. E. Robbins and L. C. Karpinski, "Stud

in Greek Arithmetic" in Nichomachus of Gerasa, New York, 1926, 117. Italics are mine.
t Nichomachus of Gerasa, Introduction to Arithmetic, II, 7, 4; trans. M. L. D'Ooge, New York
1926, 239.
t Proclus quoting Philolaus, Ad Euclid Elementa, I, 38 in Guthrie, 20.
? Philo, ibid, xxxii; Works, I, 28.
II Philo, On the Life of Moses, iii, 4; Works, III, 90.
? David Eugene Smith, History of Mathematics, II, 288.
** Plutarch, op. cit. lvi, 56; Miscellanies, 115.
tt Ibid.

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412 QUESTIONS, DISCUSSIONS, AND NOTES [Aug.-Sept.,

The very circumstance that 7 is the only member of the decad considered
ungenerated argues that the early Pythagorean concept of generation was
entirely geometric in its nature. The Neo-pythagorean inability to explain the
virginity of 7 is paralleled by a similar confusion in their attempts to justify 5
and 6 as the marriage numbers. The common solution considers them as the
sum and product of 2 and 3 but the use of the dyad as the feminine principle
amounts to a denial of their recurring definition of 3 as the first number.*
Furthermore it was entirely contrary to their philosophical tradition to give
the feminine unstable dyad precedence over the first masculine positive prin-
ciple. The confusion of these old and new traditions is most evident in Plu-
tarch's closing statement: "Now in that triangle the perpendicular consists of
3 parts, the base of 4, and the subtense of 5 * * . We are therefore to take the
perpendicular to represent the male property, the base female, and the subtense
that which is produced by them both . For the number 3 is the first odd and
perfect number, and the number 4 is a square, having for its sides the even num-
ber 2. The number 5 also in some respects resembles the father and in some
again the mother, being made up of 3 and 2."t In short, the Neo-pythagorean
dilemma appears to have arisen from their inability to comprehend the number
4 as a first principle; that is, to have lost sight of the purely geometric basis of
number.
We may assume that this geometric number theory was known at least
until the fourth century B.C. since it coincides with Plato's derivation of the
marriage number in the Republic from the 3, 4, 5 right triangle.t The section,
"But the number of a human creature is the first number in which root and
square increases, having received 3 distances and 4 limits of elements that make
both like and unlike and wax and wane, render all things commensurable and
rational with one another," is interpreted by Adam? and Young|| alike as
33+43+53=216, relating the parts of the cosmic triangle. The subsequent
computation of 12960000 is detailed by Adam as

(3 X 4 X 5)4 = (3600)2 = 4800 X 2700.

The first term is directly derived from the generative triangle. The second an
last are elementary geometric forms, a square, "the one equal an equal number
of times," and "a hundred cubes of 3." But the fact that 4800 is not so simply
derived accounts for Plato's tortuous derivation of this term from 5, an element

* Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, xxviii, in Guthrie, 71; Augustine, City of God, XI, 31; ed.
Marcus Dods, Edinburgh, 1871, I, 475; Theologumena Arithmetica, Ast, 8, cited by Robbins and
Karpinski, 117.
t Plutarch, ibid.
t Republic, 546, B, C, D.
? James Adam, The Republic of Plato, Cambridge, 1902, II, 264-306.
11 Grace Chisholm Young, On the Solution of a Pair of Simultaneous Diophantine Equations
connected with the Nuptial Number of Plato, Proceedings of London Math. Soc., ser. 2, xxiii, 27-44
(1925).

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1936] QUESTIONS, DISCUSSIONS, AND NOTES 413

of the triangle, "the one side of 100 squares rising from the rational diameters
of 5 diminished by 1 each, or if from irrational diameters, by 2."

A NOTE ON PARTIAL FRACTIONS

By L. S. JOHNSTON, University of Detroit

In manuscript notes left by the late Rear Admiral John P. Merrell, United
States Navy, Head of the Department of Mathematics, United States Naval
Academy in the 1890's and later (about 1905-1908) President of the Naval War
College, the writer discovers the following method of resolving into its partial
fractions the proper fraction

f(x)
(X2 + ax + b)(X2 + cx + d)

where the denominator is not separated into linear factors. While it does not
appear that the method possesses any advantage on the score of brevity, it is
at least somewhat different from the more conventional methods. The method
will be illustrated by a particular example rather than proved, though the
proof is not difficult.
Consider the equation

X3-8X2 10x -30 Ax+B Cx+D

(x2 + X + 3)(X2 + 2x + 5) x2 + X + 3 x2 + 2x + 5

or

(2) x2(x-8)-lOx-30 = (Ax + B)(x2 + 2x + 5) + (Cx + D)(x2 + x + 3).

Replacing x2 by - 2x -5, but not disturbing x itself, we have

(-2x - 5)(x - 8) - lOx - 30 = (Cx + D)(- x - 2),

or

- 2x2 + x + 10- Cx2 - Dx - 2Cx - 2D.

Again replacing x2 by -2x-5 without disturbing x itself, we have

5x +20 = -Dx + SC-2D.

Equating coefficients of like powers of x, we have D =-5, C = 2. Similarly we

might have replaced, in (2), x2 by - x -3 and carried through the operation
in exactly the same manner, finding A = -1, B = -3.
In every case, then, the method consists in writing the analogue of (2) in
such a way as to display the left member as the sum of linear functions of x
multiplied by integral powers of x2, and then replacing x2 by the linear function
of x which will make any given factor of the denominator vanish. This replace-

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