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Indlæser... Pythagoras: His Lives and the Legacy of a Rational Universeaf Kitty Ferguson
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Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. An excellent overview of not just the Theorem but the man and his influence on human history for over 2500 years. ( ) CONTENT 1. Aknowledgements - pag. ix 2. Lifetimes and other Significant Dates - pag. xi PART I: SIXTH CENTURY B.C. 1. "At the hinge of legend and history" - pag. 3 2. The Long-haired Samian - pag. 10 3. "Entirely different from the institutions of the Greeks" - pag. 19 4. "Among them was a man of immense knowledge" - pag. 33 5. "My true race is of Heaven" - pag. 49 6. "All things known have number" - pag. 62 7. "The Famous Fugure of Pythagoras" - pag. 76 PART II: FIFTH CENTURY B.C. - SEVENTH CENTURY A.D. 1. A Book by Philolaus the Pythagorean - pag. 97 2. Plato's Search for Pythagoras - pag. 115 3. "The ancients, our superiors, who dwelt nearer to the gods, have passed this word on to us" - pag. 129 4. From Aristotle to Euclid - pag. 147 5. The Roman Pythagoras - pag. 163 6. Through Neo-Pythagorean and Ptolemaic Eyes - pag. 181 7. The Wrap-up of Antiquity - pag. 197 PART III: EIGHT - TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES A.D. 1. "Dwarfs on the shoulders of giants: Pythagoras in the Middle Ages" - pag. 215 2. "Wherein Nature shows herself most excellent and complete"- pag. 232 3. "While the morning stars sang toghether: Johannes Kepler - pag. 250 4. Enlightened and Illuminated - pag. 276 5. Janus Face - pag. 297 6. The Labyrinths of Simplicity - pag. 313 7. Epilogue: Music or Silence - pag. 327 Appendix - pag. 329 Notes - pag. 331 Bibliography - pag. 347 index - pag. 355 Pythagoras was born about 570 BC and grew up on the island of Samos...just off the Turkish Coast. He was clearly a remarkable character. Travelled widely in his younger years...to Egypt and apparently to Babylon. (Where it is possible that he picked up a few tips on Geometry). It is known that a thousand years earlier, (1804-1595 BC) the Bablyonians knew the pythagorean theorem; the value of Pi and could calculate square and cube roots. So quite possible that this knowledge survived to be learned by Pythagoras. He apparently spent 12 years there. He returned to Samos and took in some pupils and in 532 BC sailed to Croton near the "heel" of Italy.....Here he built up a following of disciples and contributed significantly to public life. Apparently one of their beliefs was that souls at death pass into other humans or animals..and thus this had implications for what Pythagoras did or did not eat. He was notorious for not eating beans. (Actually, the belief about souls migrating into other people or animals is pretty much also a hindu or buddhist belief). From a discovery about harmonious notes having a mathematical relationship, the Pythagoreans deduced that "all things known have a number". They lasted about 30 years in Croton...when there was an uprising against them and Pythagoras was murdered.... (about 502 BC). His famous theorem (as mentioned above) was certainly not "invented" by him but in and after his own time he was widely attributed with it's discovery and popularisation. Pythagorean communities existed in and around the heel of Italy after Pythagoras's death and Plato (at the age of 38) went in search of this learning, around the year 390 BC, to the city of Tarentum. A community of Pythagoreans had survived there ....and Plato became acquainted with Archytas who was both an outstanding mathematician and scholar..and also an able civic leader. Apparently they stayed in touch. About half of the book is devoted to the legacy of Pythagoras....notably the kind of scientific tradition that builds on the idea that...at it's foundations the universe is rational and understandable and can be studied and measured. Some of the Pythagorean ideas were picked up by Plato and popularised by hime and later by Plotinus. It's worth mentioning that much of the information we have about Pythagoras was written much later by Porphry and Heraclitus (who claimed Pythagoras was a charlatan)...and there is very little direct information about the man. It didn't help that the learnings of his group were secret and pretty much died with him when the group were murdered at Croton. Kitty Ferguson, the author, is apparently a populariser of science rather than a Pythagorean scholar but seems to have researched this topic extremely well. I am impressed with the book and happy to give it 5 stars. ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
This is the story of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, whose insights transformed the ancient world and still inspire the realms of science, mathematics, philosophy and the arts. Einstein said that the most incredible thing about our universe was that it was comprehensible at all. As Kitty Ferguson explains, Pythagoras had much the same idea - but 2,500 years earlier. Though known by many only for his famous Theorem, in fact the pillars of our scientific tradition - belief that the universe is rational, that there is unity to all things, and that numbers and mathematics are a powerful guide to truth about nature and the cosmos - hark back to the convictions of this legendary scholar. Kitty Ferguson brilliantly evokes Pythagoras' ancient world of, showing how ideas spread in antiquity, and chronicles the incredible influence he and his followers have had on so many extraordinary people in the history of Western thought and science. 'Pythagoras' influence on the ideas, and therefore on the destiny, of the human race was probably greater than that of any single man before or after him' - Arthur Koestler. No library descriptions found. |
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