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the life of pythagoras
Daren Greer

Honors Algebra 2

5th hour

5/12/2013

The Life of Pythagoras

Pythagoras lived around 570-495 B.C.. He was born on the island of Samos, a greek island in the aegean sea.His father, Mnesarchus, was a gem engraver, and his mother, Pythias, is unknown . Due to the fact that most of his life was wrote about many years after his death most of the information is unreliable, but it is believed that during pythagoras’s younger years he traveled the land in search of knowledge. It is believed that he traveled to such places as Egypt, arabia, india, Babylon, Phoenicia, and Judaea searching such knowledge about mythic cults and mythic gods.The Egyptians are said to have taught him geometry, and the Phoenicians are believed to have taught Pythagoras arithmetic.

Around the age of 40, Pythagoras is believed to have moved to croton, a greek colony in italy, and set up a religious group where his followers pursued the religious rites and practices taught by Pythagoras.

“The soul resides in the brain, and is immortal. It moves from one being to another, sometimes from a human into an animal, through a series of reincarnations called transmigration until it becomes pure. Pythagoras believed that both mathematics and music could purify”.

“All things are numbers. Mathematics is the basis for everything, and geometry is the highest form of mathematical studies. The physical world can understood through mathematics”

Pythagoras is probably best known for his discovery of the Pythagorean Theorem.

Not only did the group practice mathematics and religious topics, but they also became involved with the politics in Croton. Their involvement in the politics of Croton was not taken too kindly. The people of Croton burned down some of the meeting places of the Pythagorean followers. Killings many of them. with only the young making it out to safety. The Pythagorean order was everywhere suppressed, and was never again to return. Still the

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