Pythagoras And Ancient Athenian Culture - 1708 Words

Pythagoras and Ancient Athenian Culture The ancient Greeks did not always possess the deeply creative and accepting culture imagined by society today. They started off as very ritualistic and stubbornly polytheistic, rejecting those who denied the gods and ostracising people who seemed unpious. While some of these traits never disappeared, others became more like the Greeks we recognize today starting in the fifth century BCE. It was around this time that Pythagoras lived and taught. Today we remember him as the founder of much of modern mathematics, but at the time he was also the founder of a religious and philosophical sect that carried on for centuries after his death. It can be argued that his teachings, with their mix of†¦show more content†¦Pythagoras was not only a mathematician; in fact it is sometimes doubted whether the math we attribute to him was actually his own work or simply reprocessing of the work of others. He was instead generally seen as a religious figure and was the leader of what is s ometimes referred to as a â€Å"cult.† He was described as â€Å"part philosopher, part priest, and part conjuror† and had a lot of bearing in both the religious and scientific views of his time. He believed that religion and science were indeed one and the same, with math serving as a pathway for discovering the workings of the universe. This belief was controversial, and many philosophers referred to Pythagoras sarcastically, but it was a belief that would continue onward throughout Greek history in the minds of other philosophers, such as Aristotle. It was the basis for the interest in mathematics and astronomy, because he taught that by learning the movement of the heavenly bodies, or planets, humans would be able to find the formula for all movement in the universe and predict future events. His belief in the immortality of the soul also persevered into the new intellectual shift. It was based on the traditional myth of Hades, the land of the dead, but put forth further logical conclusions.