The Music of Pythagoras How an Ancient Brotherhood Cracked the Code of the Universe and Lit the Path from Antiquity to Oute

by Ferguson, Kitty

• ISBN13: 9780802716316
• ISBN10: 0802716318
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-04-15
• Publisher: Walker Books

Summary

The enthralling story of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, whose insights transformed the ancient world and still inspire the realms of science, mathematics, philosophy, and the arts. "Pythagoras's 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," wrote Arthur Koestler. Though most people know of him only for the famous Pythagorean Theorem (a2 +b2=c2), in fact the pillars of our scientific traditionbelief 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 cosmoshark back to the convictions of this legendary sixth-century B.C. scholar. Born around 570 B.C. on the cultured Aegean island of Samos, Pythagoras (according to ancient tales) studied with the sage Thales nearby at Miletus, and with priests and scribes in Egypt and Babylon. Eventually he founded his own school at Croton in southern Italy, where he and his followers began to unravel the surprising deep truths concealed behind such ordinary tasks as tuning a lyre. While considering why some string lengths produced beautiful sounds and others discordant ones, they uncovered the ratios of musical harmony, and recognized that hidden behind the confusion and complexity of nature are patterns and orderly relationships. They had surprised the Creator at his drafting board and had glimpsed the mind of God! Some of them later would also find something darker in numbers and nature: irrationality, a revelation so unsettling and subversive that it may have contributed to the destruction of their brotherhood. Praised for her ability to illuminate complex subjects, Kitty Ferguson brilliantly evokes the archaic world of Pythagoras, showing how ideas spread in antiquity, chronicling the influence he and his followers have had on so many extraordinary people in the history of Western thought and science, and bringing a poignant human saga to readers who are daily reminded that harmony and chaos can and do coexist.

Author Biography

Kitty Ferguson is the author of Tycho & Kepler, Measuring the Universe, The Fire in the Equations, and Stephen Hawking: Quest for a Theory of Everything. She is also a Juilliard-trained professional musician, and lives in New Jersey.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Lifetimes and Other Significant Dates	p. xi
Sixth Century b.c.
"At the hinge of legend and history"	p. 3
The Long-haired Samian	p. 10
"Entirely different from the institutions of the Greeks"	p. 19
"Among them was a man of immense knowledge"	p. 33
"My true race is of Heaven"	p. 49
"All things known have number"	p. 62
"The Famous Figure of Pythagoras"	p. 76
Fifth Century b.c.-Seventh Century a.d.
A Book by Philolaus the Pythagorean	p. 97
Plato's Search for Pythagoras	p. 115
"The ancients, our superiors, who dwelt nearer to the gods, have passed this word on to us"	p. 129
From Aristotle to Euclid	p. 147
The Roman Pythagoras	p. 163
Through Neo-Pythagorean and Ptolemaic Eyes	p. 181
The Wrap-up of Antiquity	p. 197
Eighth-Twenty-first Centuries a.d.
"Dwarfs on the shoulders of giants": Pythagoras in the Middle Ages	p. 215
"Wherein Nature shows herself most excellent and complete"	p. 232
"While the morning stars sang together": Johannes Kepler	p. 250
Enlightened and Illuminated	p. 276
Janus Face	p. 297
The Labyrinths of Simplicity	p. 313
Epilogue: Music or Silence	p. 327
Appendix	p. 329
Notes	p. 331
Bibliography	p. 347
Index	p. 355
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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