- Lived:
- c. 570–495 BCE · born on the Greek island of Samos; taught in Croton, southern Italy
- Tradition:
- Pre-Socratic Greek; founder of a movement that was half mathematics, half religion
- The Big Idea:
- The deepest truth about the world is not what it's made of but how it's patterned — reality, at bottom, is number.
- In their words:
- "Stop! Do not beat him! It is the soul of a friend — I knew him the moment I heard his voice." (as reported, mockingly, by his contemporary Xenophanes)
- If you remember one thing:
- Pythagoras — or his followers — discovered that musical harmony is ratio, the first proof that a quality you feel can be a quantity you count. Every equation in every physics textbook is the descendant of that idea.