MSU English 213

Genius of Pythagoras - by Cromwell Productions

Pythagoras may be know by everyone all over the world for a geometric law but he could be known for so much more. He was the son of a wealthy man and spent his childhood learning everything possible about everything he could. He was described as having a thirst for learning never satisfied. Unlike most of the thinkers he met, Pythagoras tried to tie together the truest elements of religion, science, mathematics etc to create an ultimate philosophy, Pythagoreanism. Pythagoreanism is a description of how Pythagoras thought and learned; it is a description about a way of learning.

Pythagoras traveled to Egypt to learn more. He was captured along with most other great thinkers then in Egypt and taken prisoner to Babylon. His knowledge soon led him to educate the children of the Babylonian Elite. When Pythagoras returned to his home of Samos, he tried to set up a community with the principles of truth and simple living without the ravages of war. He succeeded in creating a community in Croton, a small town in Italy. His community lead a peaceful lifestyle emphasizing science, philosophy and art and encouraging a strict vegetarian(vegan). Everything in his commune was shared. Sadly, Pythagoras' community was destroyed when their neighbors sought more farmland.

Plato used the works of Pythagoras based on the success of his commune and used them to study. Plato said "Pythagoras was as essential to philosophy as Prometheus was to mankind when he gave them the gift of fire." None of his works survive in their original form. We have only the interpretations of others, such as Plato, describing their importance. Pythagoras' work played a huge role in Plato's Republic. However, Aristophanes made fun of Pythagoras' communal ideals in the play The Assembly of Women so not everyone thought well of Pythagoras' ideas.

The most astonishing thing in this documentary, in my mind, is the relationship Pythagoras learned existed between the length of a string on a lyre and the sound each string would produce. Consequently, music could then be broken down into mathematics and led to the saying that "things are numbers". That reminds me of The Matrix how the entire world is made out of numbers which Neo can see.