Kitty Ferguson - Pythagoras: His Lives and the Legacy of a Rational Universe

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Tycho & Kepler: The Unlikely Partnership That Forever Changed Our Understanding of the Heavens

Measuring the Universe: Our Historic Quest to Chart the Horizons of Space and Time

The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion, and the Search for God

Prisons of Light: Black Holes

Stephen Hawking: Quest for a Theory of Everything

Previously published in the USA in 2008 by

Walker Publishing Company, Inc., New York

Published in the UK in 2010 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

3941 North Road, London N7 9DP

email:

www.iconbooks.co.uk

This electronic edition published in 2010 by Icon Books

ISBN: 978-1-84831-250-0 (ePub format)

ISBN: 978-1-84831-251-7 (Adobe ebook format)

Printed edition (ISBN: 978-1-84831-192-3)

sold in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia

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Printed edition published in Australia in 2010

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Crows Nest, NSW 2065

Text copyright 2010 Kitty Ferguson

The author has asserted her moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any

means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

To Serafina Clarke

Contents

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank all those friends who, during the years when I was researching and writing this book, have told me about ways some of them odd and unexpected that Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans have made an impact, or at least an appearance, in their own fields of study and interest. I also wish to thank my husband, Yale, for the help he has given me out of his own historical knowledge and library, his wonderful company on research journeys to Samos and Crotone, and his invaluable early critique of this book; Eleanor Robson, for her patient help in the area of Mesopotamian mathematics; John Barrow, for calling my attention to the Sulba-Stras and reconstructing the tunnel of Eupalinos on Samos for me out of a dinner napkin; the staff of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Crotone for their extraordinary helpfulness; and the librarians at the Chester Public Library, for their skill and willingness when I came to them with numerous unusual interlibrary loan requests.

Lifetimes and Other Significant Dates

CHAPTER 1

Pythagoras c. 570500 B.C.

Thales fl. c. 585 B.C.

Anaximander 610546 B.C.

Diogenes Laertius fl. c. A.D. 193217

Porphyry c. A.D. 233306

Iamblichus of Chalcis c. A.D. 260330

CHAPTER 2

Babylonian exile of the Hebrews 598/7 and 587/6 to 538 B.C.

Rule of the Samian tyrant Polykrates 535522 B.C.

CHAPTERS 36

Pythagoras arrival in Croton 532/531 B.C.

Croton defeats and destroys Sybaris 510 B.C.

Death or disappearance of Pythagoras 500 B.C.

Second decimation of the Pythagoreans 454 B.C.

CHAPTER 7

Philolaus c. 474399? B.C.

Parmenides 515 or 540mid-5th century B.C.

Melissus early 5th centurylate 5th century B.C.

Zeno of Elea c. 490mid to late 5th century B.C.

Socrates c. 470399 B.C.

CHAPTER 8

Plato 427347 B.C.

Archytas 428347 B.C.

Dionysius the Elder c. 430367 B.C.

Dionysius the Younger 397343 B.C.

Aristoxenus of Tarentum fl. fourth century B.C.

CHAPTER 9

Socrates c. 470399 B.C.

Plato 427347 B.C.

CHAPTER 10

Aristotle 384322 B.C.

Theophrastus 372287 B.C.

Alexander the Great 356323 B.C.

Heracleides Ponticus 387312 B.C.

Dicaearchus of Messina fl. c. 320 B.C.

Euclid fl. c. 300 B.C.

CHAPTER 11

Cicero 10643 B.C.

Numa ruled c. 715673 B.C.

Ennius c. 239c. 160 B.C.

Marcus Fulvius Nobilior 2nd century B.C.

Cato the Elder 234149 B.C.

Pliny the Elder A.D. 2379

Posidonius c. 13551 B.C.

Sextus Empiricus fl. 3rd century A.D.

Eudorus of Alexandria fl. c. 25 BC

Nigidius Figulus fl. no later than 9827 B.C.

Vitruvius fl. 1st century B.C.

Occelus of Lucania after Aristotle

CHAPTER 12

Eudorus of Alexandria fl. c. 25 B.C.

Sotion 1st century A.D.

Seneca c. 4 B.C.A.D. 65

Sextians 1st century A.D.

Apollonius of Tyana 1st century A.D.

Alexander of Abonuteichos c. A.D. 110170

Julia Domna died A.D. 217

Philostratus A.D. 170c. 245

Philo of Alexandria 20 B.C.A.D. 40

Ovid 43 B.C.A.D. 17

Plutarch A.D. 45125

Moderatus of Gades 1st century A.D.

Theon of Smyrna c. A.D. 70130/140

Nicomachus fl. c. A.D. 100

Numenius of Apamea fl. late 2nd century A.D.

Ptolemy c. A.D. 100c. 180

CHAPTER 13

Diogenes Laertius fl. A.D. 193217

Porphyry c. A.D. 233306

Iamblichus of Chalcis c. A.D. 260330

Longinus A.D. 213273

Plotinus A.D. 204270

Macrobius A.D. 395423

Boethius c. A.D. 470524

CHAPTER 14

Hunayn 9th century

Brethren of Purity 10th century

Al-Hasan 10th century

Aurelian 9th century

John Scotus Eriugena c. 815c. 877

Regino of Prm died 915

Raymund of Toledo 11251152

King Roger of Sicily 10951154

Bernard of Chartres 12th century

Nicole dOresme 14th century

Nicholas of Cusa 14011464

Franchino Gaffurio 14511522

CHAPTER 15

Petrarch 13041374

Nicholas of Cusa 14011464

Leon Battista Alberti 14071472

Marsilio Ficino 14331499

Pico della Mirandola 14631494

Giorgio Anselmi 15th century

Nicolaus Copernicus 14731543

Andrea Palladio 15081580

Tycho Brahe 15461601

CHAPTER 16

Philipp Melanchthon 14971560

Tycho Brahe 15461601

Michael Mstlin 15501631

Johannes Kepler 15711630

CHAPTER 17

Vincenzo Galilei late 1520s1591

Galileo Galilei 15641642

William Shakespeare c. 15641616

John Milton 16081674

John Dryden 16311700

Joseph Addison 16721719

Ren Descartes 15961650

Robert Hooke 16351703

Robert Boyle 16271691

Isaac Newton 16421727

Gottfried Leibniz 16461716

Carl Linnaeus 17071778

William Wordsworth 17701850

Pierre-Simon de LaPlace 17491827

Filippo Michele Buonarroti 17611837

Hans Christian Oersted 17771851

Michael Faraday 17911867

James Clerk Maxwell 18311879

CHAPTER 18

Bertrand Russell 18721970

Arthur Koestler 19051983

PART I

Sixth Century B.C.

CHAPTER 0

At the hinge of legend and history

On the Aegean island of Samos , on the narrow arm of the harbour that juts farthest out to sea, there is a stark, skeletal structure. Immense shards of iron look as though they have fallen from the sky in the shape of a huge right triangle. One end of the diagonal has buried itself in the ground. Instead of a vertical line rising from the right angle, there is the statue of a man lean, elongated, taller than life. He is reaching up with his right arm as though to conjure down the broken piece of iron that, if it were complete, would form the vertical of the triangle. Between his fingers and its lowest tip is a gap, such a gap as separates the finger of God from the finger of Adam in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The triangle is not this mans creation. It is as old as the universe, as old as truth.