PYTHAGORAS

(c. 580 to c. 495 BC)

Pythagoras' Life

The Search for "Harmony"

Pythagoras' Psychology

His Legacy

There is much about the life of Pythagoras that is probably mythological. Fantastic stories abound about his life and his doings!  Nonetheless a few "facts" seem fairly clear. He was born on the island of Samos (off the coast of modern-day Turkey) to a moderately wealthy family around 580 BC (though other accounts say that he was born a son of the god Apollo!). He excelled as a student and traveled widely as a young man. Tradition says that he explored from India in the East to Gaul in the West. Certainly he had the broadened mind that comes from some kind of exposure to other cultures--an unusual trait in a time when Greeks thought the rest of the world to be "barbaric." It was perhaps also in these travels (perhaps in Egypt) that he encountered astrology--and the mathematics that inevitably goes with astrological calculations. His story remains vague until when, at around age 50, Pythagors left Samos:  he was not finding the "tyranny" of Polycrates at Samos to be much to his liking. He moved on to the Greek city of Crotona, located on the southern shore of Italy. Here he gathered a large number of students, including females (again, very exceptional for his times) and founded a school--or more accurately, a mystical learning community. His thinking shows strong "Eastern" influences. For instance, he believed in reincarnation or transmigration of the souls--in the Hindu manner. He was a vegitarian (in keeping with the idea of reincarnation of the human soul and the possibility that all biological life houses a once-human soul) and insisted on vegitarianism on the part of his students (except for beans, which for some unaccountable reason he also forbade!). In fact, we could think of him as a charismatic or cultic leader, a "guru," holding his students tightly under his intellectual/emotional sway.  A student was placed under a strict code of thought and behavior and faced several years of intense self-discipline before being accorded the privilege of studying directly under the master.  All goods were held in common by the community.  In fact in becoming a Pythagorean, a person gave himself/herself over completely to the master and his community.  Indeed, he established in Pythagoreanism a "religion" which drew countless loyal adherents--even for centuries after his death. Pythagoras seemed to have had a very strong eye for the dramatic.  He himself wore a gold diadem, a sweeping white robe and (very unusual for the times) trousers!  He seemed to have thought of himself as being some kind of Orphic prophet--one even with magical powers--dispensing the secrets of the universe to his inner circle of devotees. Pythagoras was a teacher, trying to bring the world to enlightenment, to perfection even, through training civic leaders--and even taking up civic leadership himself.  Thus Pythagoras became deeply involved in Crotonian politics--on the side of the aristocratic party. At some point, the commoners or partisans of Crotonian democracy took violent exception to his brand of politics and burned his school down (along with a number of his students).  He also died soon thereafter--though there are several differing accounts of where and how he met his death.

At the heart of Pythagoras' teachings (such as we are able to gather from this secretive cult) was the vision of the underlying "harmony" of the universe. This harmony had to be "abstracted" from the confusion of visible "things" and daily events. This harmony indeed existed only in the abstract--just as numbers and mathematical formulas are abstractions. But to Pythagoras--this was the realm of the truly Real. It was not the world of "things" and daily events that was the truly Real. It was the mathematical abstractions or harmonies standing behind such things that was the Real.  And thus it was his determination--and the goal of his school--to uncover this hidden, even "secret" or "mystical," abstract realm of numerically perfect "harmonies" permeating the universe. For instance, the story is told that he remarked in passing a blacksmith's shop that the ringing sound of different hammers on the anvils produced distinctly steady and consistent tones (like that of today's tuning fork). He noticed that the tonal difference was related to the relative size and weight of the hammers. This supposedly gave him the idea that musical tones could also be expressed in mathematical terms.  He experimented with stringed instruments and soon realized that an octave's difference in tone could be produced by the exact doubling (or halving) of the length of the string of a musical instrument.  In fact the whole musical scale could be produced precisely by differing the lengths of such string.  In short, even sound was reduceable to such mathematically perfect "harmonies." It was Pythagoras' desire to find the mathematical harmonies of all things.  Thus in the course of his quest, he discovered that the total of the angles of any triangle always added up to the total of two right angles (180 degrees).  He discovered (the Pythagorean theorem) that the sum of the square of the two sides of a right-angled triangle is always equal to the square of the length of the hypotenuse (the longest side). He made the conjecture that the universe ("cosmos" as he was it seems the first to term it) was a perfect sphere--and that the earth, at the center of the universe, was also a perfect sphere (the first Westerner we think to have made such an observation).   He deduced correctly the cause of the shadow of the moon--and the reasons for its occasional eclipses.

Pythagoras was very much a part of the Orphist movement within the widely popular Dionysian cult of ancient Greece.  Dionysianism (related to the worship of Dionysus or Bacchus, god of wine) was itself the bequest to the Greeks of the wilder-spirited peoples who predated them and were found still concentratred in such places as Thrace.  Orphism was a reform movement within Dionysianism set off by the Greek mind-set with its interest in a "higher" understanding of why things are the way they are.  Pythagoras was an Orphist--seeking to probe even deeper into the mystery of "things." But note:  though this can sound all very intellectual, it was indeed a very "spiritual" matter for Pythagoras and his followers.   The quest for the hidden or deeper meaning of things was related to the very same spirit that draws people to pray and to seek after the favor of the gods.  Pythagoras supposed that by discovering the hidden formulas to life--he himself would attain god-like qualities--even "eternal" life. Being Orphic, Pythagoras saw life as a cyclical series of birth, growth, maturity, decay, death and rebirth.  This was the rhythm of all creation.  It was celebrated at every Dionysian festival as the worshipers played out this drama of life's migration through yet another cycle. Pythagoras was very much a man of his times--in the sense that the heavens were also spawning during the 6th century BC (the "Axial Age") such thinkers as Zoroaster, Lao Tzu, Gautama Buddha, Mahavira, Confucius, 2nd Isaiah, thinkers throughout the civilized world who were probing deeply the mysterious course of the universe--and the human part in this drama. Pythagoras saw the dualism of 1) the perfect and eternal on the one hand and 2) the changing and corruptible or destructible on the other.  The visible world belonged to the latter realm of the changing and corruptible.  The cosmic order or heavens belonged to the former realm of the perfect and eternal. The human soul was caught somewhere in between.  It had the potential to go either way:  toward perfection--or toward corruption and destruction.  By and large the human free will chose for itself the destiny of corruption and destruction.  But Pythagoras was determined to find the way of perfection and eternal.  He was going to "escape" the endless round of corruptible life--by focusing all soul-consciousness on the higher, the perfect, the eternal.  In a sense, he was seeking the Hindu moksha or release from the cycle of earthly existence.  He was going to break free from the Dionysian drama that was re-enacted every year.  He was going to enter (or return to) "eternity." The rigors of his educational program all pointed to that hope. The mathematical exercises of the mind were all aimed at stretching human consciousness toward that end.  By stilling all the lower instincts of the body (a rather anti-Dionysian thought actually!!) and focusing all being on the intellect, on the soul's rational facilities, Pythagoras and his followers were going to reach the eternal world beyond--the world of perfect harmony, in which their own souls would be harmonized with the Eternal. Thus all this mathematics and science of the Pythagoreans was in fact a very religious or "mystical" enterprise.

We in the West are wont to pay tribute to Plato for having laid out the basic thoughts on which pretty much all of Western philosophy and religion (including Christianity) has followed ever since. But in fact in almost every important respect, Pythagoras had already laid out a century and a half earlier the thinking that Plato eventually took up and made his own.  Indeed, Greek philosophy--even all Western philosophy, really--is only further commentary on Pythagoras! Perhaps its was inevitable that someone should come to these understandings for the West.  The times were ripe for such discoveries. Nonetheless it was the very dedicated Pythagoras who rose to the occasion.  We are thus deeply indebted to his genius.

---

Go to the history section: Ancient Greece (500 to 300 BC)

---

  Miles H. Hodges