Pythagoras: The Man Behind the Theorem

Pythagoras. The Man Behind the Theorem

The name of Pythagoras is known to everyone — the theorem, the right-angled triangle, the square on the hypotenuse — and yet the man himself is one of the most elusive figures in the whole of history. This biography sets aside the legend, the miracles, and the schoolroom clichés to ask a simple and difficult question: what can actually be known about Pythagoras of Samos, the sixth-century philosopher and religious teacher who founded a famous brotherhood, shaped Plato, and helped to convince Western civilization that the universe is built of number?

Pythagoras: The Man Behind the Theorem follows his life in order — from the brilliant and dangerous world of the Greek island of Samos, through the legendary journeys to Egypt and the East, to the founding of his remarkable community at Croton in southern Italy. It opens the guarded door of the secretive Pythagorean brotherhood and examines its strange rule of silence and taboo, its doctrine of the immortal and transmigrating soul, and its vision of a cosmos ordered by number and harmony. It tells how the brotherhood rose to political power, how it was destroyed in fire and violence, and how — against every expectation — the Pythagorean tradition survived the catastrophe to shape Plato, the Renaissance, and the birth of modern science.

Above all, this is an honest book. Pythagoras wrote nothing, and almost everything ever said about him was set down centuries after his death. Rather than disguise that difficulty, this biography makes it the very heart of the story. It separates, carefully and openly, what we can know from what we cannot; it shows how a legend of extraordinary size came to be built around a man of whom we possess no face, no voice, and no certain date; and it recovers, from beneath all of it, the real and consequential figure who founded one of the most powerful ideas any human being has ever had.

Written in clear, jargon-free prose for curious general readers, with no background in philosophy, mathematics, or ancient history required, this is a vivid and trustworthy introduction to one of the most influential, and least knowable, human beings who ever lived.

What you will find in this book

• A clear account of Pythagoras's life, carefully separating the historical man from twenty-five centuries of accumulated legend.

• The truth about the famous theorem, and why the relationship it describes was already a thousand years old before Pythagoras was born.

• The world that formed him: the wealthy island of Samos, the tyrant Polycrates, and the dawn of philosophy in Ionia.

• The legendary journeys to Egypt and Babylon, weighed honestly and without credulity against the evidence.

• Inside the Pythagorean brotherhood: its rule of silence, its diet and its taboos, its sacred number, and its secrecy.

• The great doctrines: the immortal soul, the transmigration of souls, and the vision of the cosmos as harmony and number.

• The genuine scientific achievement of the Pythagoreans, the discovery that musical harmony obeys simple whole-number ratios.

• How the brotherhood seized power in Croton and was destroyed in the fire of the revolt of Cylon.

• The long afterlife of Pythagoras, from his decisive influence on Plato to the Neoplatonists, the Renaissance, and Kepler.

• A detailed chronology, a guide to the key figures, a glossary of terms, and a note on the sources for readers who wish to go further.

Who this book is for

This book is written for readers of general culture who are curious about Pythagoras, ancient Greece, and the origins of philosophy and science, but who are not specialists in any of those fields. It assumes no prior knowledge and explains every term it uses. It will appeal to anyone who has learned the famous theorem at school and wondered what kind of man, and what kind of world, actually stood behind the name.