The Pre-Socratic period

The Pre-Socratic period of the Ancient era of philosophy refers to Greek philosophers active before
Socrates, or contemporaries of Socrates who expounded on earlier knowledge.

They include the following major philosophers:

Thales of Miletos (c. 624 - 546 B.C.) Greek
Anaximander (c. 610 - 546 B.C.) Greek
Anaximenes (c. 585 - 525 B.C.) Greek
Pythagoras (c. 570 - 490 B.C.) Greek
Heraclitus (c. 535 - 475 B.C.) Greek
Parmenides of Elea (c. 515 - 450 B.C.) Greek
Anaxagoras (c. 500 - 428 B.C.) Greek
Empedocles (c. 490 - 430 B.C.) Greek
Zeno of Elea (c. 490 - 430 B.C.) Greek
Protagoras (c. 490 - 420 B.C.) Greek
Gorgias (c. 487 - 376 B.C.) Greek
Democritus (c. 460 - 370 B.C.) Greek

Generally speaking, all that remains of their works are a few textual fragments and the quotations of
later philosophers and historians.

The Pre-Socratic philosophers rejected traditional mythological explanations for the phenomena they
saw around them in favor of more rational explanations. They started to ask questions like where did
everything come from, and why is there such variety, and how can nature be described mathematically?
They tended to look for universal principles to explain the whole of Nature. Although they are arguably
more important for the questions they asked than the answers they arrived at, the problems and
paradoxes they identified became the basis for later mathematical, scientific and philosophic study.

Important movements of the period include the Milesian School, the Eleatic School, the Ephesian School,
Pluralism, Pythagoreanism, Sophism and Atomism.
Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 - 490 B.C.)

Introduction
Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 - 490 B.C.) was an early Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher and
mathematician from the Greek island of Samos.

He was the founder of the influential philosophical and religious movement or cult called
Pythagoreanism, and he was probably the first man to actually call himself a philosopher (or lover of
wisdom). Pythagoras (or in a broader sense the Pythagoreans), allegedly exercised an important
influence on the work of Plato.

As a mathematician, he is known as the "father of numbers" or as the first pure mathematician, and
is best known for his Pythagorean Theorem on the relation between the sides of a right triangle, the
concept of square numbers and square roots, and the discovery of the golden ratio.

Unfortunately, little is known for sure about him, (none of his original writings have survived, and his
followers usually published their own works in his name) and he remains something of a mysterious
figure. His secret society or brotherhood had a great effect on later esoteric traditions such as
Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry.

Life
Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos, in the eastern Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey,
some time between 580 and 572 B.C. His father was Mnesarchus, a Phoenician merchant from Tyre; his
mother was Pythais, a native of Samos. He spent his early years in Samos, but also travelled widely
with his father.

According to some reports, as a young man he met Thales, who was impressed with his abilities and
advised him to head to Memphis in Egypt and study mathematics and astronomy with the priests there,
which he soon had the opportunity of. He also travelled to study at the temples of Tyre and Byblos in
Phoenicia, as well as in Babylon. At some point he was also a student of Pherecydes of Syros and of
Anaximander (who himself had been a student of Thales).While still quite a young man, he left his native
city for Croton in southern Italy in order to escape the tyrannical government of Polycrates, the Tyrant of
Samos (or possibly to escape political problems related to an Egyptian-style school called the
"semicircle" which he had founded on Samos).

In Croton, Pythagoras established a secret religious society very similar to (and possibly influenced by)
the earlier Orphic cult, in an attempt to reform the cultural life of Croton. He formed an elite circle of
followers around himself, called Pythagoreans or the Mathematikoi ("learners"), subject to very strict
rules of conduct, owning no personal possessions and assuming a largely vegetarian diet. They
followed a structured life of religious teaching, common meals, exercise, music, poetry recitations,
reading and philosophical study (very similar to later monastic life). The school (unusually for the time)
was open to both male and female students uniformly (women were held to be different from men, but
not necessarily inferior). The Mathematikoi extended and developed the more mathematical and
scientific work Pythagoras began.

Other students, who lived in neighbouring areas, were also permitted to attend some of Pythagoras'
lectures, although they were not taught the inner secrets of the cult. They were known as the
Akousmatikoi ("listeners"), and they focused on the more religious and ritualistic aspects of
Pythagoras' teachings (and were permitted to eat meat and own personal belongings).
Among his more prominent students were the philosopher Empedocles, Brontinus (who may have
been Pythagoras' successor as head of the school), Philolaus (c. 480 - 385 B.C., who has been credited
with originating the theory that the earth was not the center of the universe), Lysis of Taras (who is
sometimes credited with many of the works usually attributed to Pythagoras himself), Cercops (an
Orphic poet), Hippasus of Metapontum (who is sometimes attributed with the discovery of irrational
numbers), Zamolxis (who later amassed great wealth and a cult following as a god among the Thracian
Dacians) and Theano (born c. 546 B.C., a mathematician, student, and possibly wife or daughter, of
Pythagoras).

Towards the end of his life, Pythagoras fled to Metapontum (further north in the Gulf of Tarentum)
because of a plot against him and his followers by a noble of Croton named Cylon. He died in
Metapontum from unknown causes some time between 500 and 490 B.C., between 80 and 90 years old.

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Work
Because of the secretive nature of his school and the custom of its students to attribute everything to
Pythagoras himself, it is difficult today to determine who actually did which work. To further confuse
matters, some forgeries under his name (a few of which still exist) circulated in antiquity. Some of his
biographers clearly aimed to present him as a god-like figure, and he became the subject of elaborate
legends surrounding his historical persona.

The school that Pythagoras established at Croton was in some ways more of a secret brotherhood or
monastery. It was based on his religious teachings and was highly concerned with the morality of
society. Members were required to live ethically, love one another, share political beliefs, practice
pacifism, and devote themselves to the mathematics of nature. They also abstained from meat,
abjured personal property and observed a rule of silence (called "echemythia"), the breaking of which
was punishable by death, based on the belief that if someone was in any doubt as to what to say, they
should remain silent.

Pythagoras saw his religious and scientific views as inseparably interconnected. He believed in the
theory of metempsychosis or the transmigration of the soul and its reincarnation again and again
after death into the bodies of humans, animals or vegetables until it became moral (a belief he may have
learned from his one-time teacher Pherecydes of Syros, who is usually credited as the first Greek to
teach the transmigration of souls). He was one of the first to propose that the thought processes and the
soul were located in the brain and not the heart.

Another of Pythagoras' central beliefs was that the essence of being (and the stability of all things that
create the universe) can be found in the form of numbers, and that it can be encountered through the
study of mathematics. For instance, he believed that things like health relied on a stable proportion of
elements, with too much or too little of one thing causing an imbalance that makes a person unhealthy.

In mathematics, Pythagoras is commonly given credit for discovering what is now know as the
Pythagorean Theorem (or Pythagoras' Theorem), a theorem in geometry that states that, in a right-
angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of
the squares of the other two sides. Although this had been known and utilized previously by the
Babylonians and Indians, he (or perhaps one of his students) is thought to have constructed the first
proof.

He believed that the number system (and therefore the universe system) was based on the sum of the
numbers one to four (i.e. ten), and that odd numbers were masculine and even numbers were
feminine. He discovered the theory of mathematical proportions, constructed from three to five
geometrical solids, and also discovered square numbers and square roots. The discovery of the
golden ratio (referring to the ratio of two quantities such that the sum of those quantities and the larger
one is the same as the ratio between the larger one and the smaller, approximately 1.618) is also usually
attributed to Pythagoras, or possibly to his student, Theano.

He was one of the first to think that the Earth was round, that all planets have an axis, and that all the
planets travel around one central point (which he originally identified as the Earth, but later renounced it
for the idea that the planets revolve around a central “fire”, although he never identified it as the Sun).
He also believed that the Moon was another planet that he called a “counter-Earth".

Pythagoras was also very interested in music, and wanted to improve the music of his day, which he
believed was not harmonious enough and was too hectic. According to legend, he discovered that
musical notes could be translated into mathematical equations by listening to blacksmiths at work.
"Pythagorean tuning" is a system of musical tuning in which the frequency relationships of all
intervals are based on the ratio 3:2 (a stack of perfect fifths), a system which has been documented as
long ago as 3500 B.C. in Babylonian texts, but which is nevertheless often attributed to Pythagoras. He
also believed in the "musica universalis" (or the "harmony of the spheres"), the idea that the planets
and stars moved according to mathematical equations, which corresponded to musical notes and thus
produced a kind of symphony.
Pythagoreanism
Pythagoreanism is an early Pre-Socratic Greek school of philosophy based around the metaphysical
beliefs of Pythagoras and his followers. Their views and methods were influential on many later
movements including Platonism, Neo-Platonism and Cynicism.

The early Pythagoreans (the first society was established in about 530 B.C.) met in the Greek Achaean
colony at Croton in Southern Italy, but after becoming caught up in some fierce local fighting, the
movement dispersed and those that survived fled back to the Greek mainland and settled around
Thebes and Phlius.

Pythagoras himself wrote nothing down, and we must rely on the second-hand accounts of his
followers and commentators, Parmenides, Empedocles, Philolaus (c. 480 - 385 B.C.) and Plato, but
accounts are often sketchy and sometimes contradictory.

Pythagorean thought was dominated by mathematics, but it was also profoundly mystical. Pythagoras
(along with his teacher Pherecydes of Syros), was one of the first Weestern philosophers to believe in
metempsychosis (the transmigration of the soul and its reincarnation after death). He also
subscribed to the views of another of his teachers, Anaximander, that the ultimate substance of things is
what he described as "apeiron" (variously described as "the boundless" or "the undefined infinite").
Pythagoras believed that the apeiron had inhaled the void from outside, filling the cosmos with vacuous
bubbles that split the universe into many inter-connected parts separated by "void", and that this play of
apeiron and peiron takes place according to a natural harmony. Always somehow underlying all these
theories is the asumption that numbers and mathematics constitute the true nature of things.

The Pythagoreans were well-known in antiquity for their vegetarianism, which they practised for
religious, ethical and ascetic reasons. Women, who were held to be different from men, but not
necessarily inferior, were given equal opportunity to study as Pythagoreans, although they had to also
learn practical domestic skills.

Pythagoreanism developed at some point into two separate schools of thought:

 the "akousmatikoi" (or "listeners"), who focused on the more religious and ritualistic aspects of
Pythagoras' teachings;
 the "mathematikoi" (or "learners"), who extended and developed the more mathematical and
scientific work he began.

The akousmatikoi claimed that the mathematikoi were not genuinely Pythagorean, but followers of the
"renegade" Pythagorean Hippasus (c. 500 B.C.) The mathematikoi, on the other hand, allowed that the
akousmatikoi were indeed Pythagorean, but felt that they were more representative of Pythagoras' real
views. The mathematikoi group eventually became closely associated with Plato and Platonism, and
much of Pythagoreanism seems to overlap Platonism. The akousmatikoi became wandering ascetics,
finally joining the Cynicism movement of the 4th Century B.C.

Neo-Pythagoreanism was a revival, in the 2nd Century B.C. - 2nd Century A.D. period, of various ideas
traditionally associated with the followers of Pythagoras. Notable Neo-Pythagoreans include 1st
Century Apollonius of Tyana (c. 40 - 120 A.D.), and their meetings were mainly held in Rome.

Ultimately, Pythagoreanism has been a dynamic force on Western culture. It has creatively influenced
philosophers, theologians, mathematicians and astronomers, as well as musicians, composers, poets and
architects of the Middle Ages.