Pythagoras课件.ppt

SC/NATS 1730, V * SC/NATS 1730, V * Pythagoras Numbers as the ultimate reality Pythagoras of Samos Born between 580 and 569. Died about 500 BCE. Lived in Samos, an island off the coast of Ionia. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans Pythagoras himself lived earlier than many of the other Pre-Socratics and had some influence on them: E.g., Heraclitos, Parmenides, and Zeno Very little is known about what Pythagoras himself taught, but he founded a cult that promoted and extended his views. Most of what we know is from his followers. The Pythagorean Cult The followers of Pythagoras were a close-knit group like a religious cult. Vows of poverty. Secrecy. Special dress, went barefoot. Strict diet: Vegetarian Ate no beans. Everything is Number The Pythagoreans viewed number as the underlying structure of everything in the universe. Compare to Thales’ view of water, Anaximander’s apeiron, Anaximenes’ air, Heraclitos, change. Pythagorean numbers take up space. Like little hard spheres. Numbers and Music One of the discoveries attributed to Pythagoras himself. Musical scale: 1:2 = octave 2:3 = perfect fifth 3:4 = perfect fourth Numbers and Music, contd. Relative string lengths for notes of the scale from lowest note (bottom) to highest. The octave higher is half the length of the former. The fourth is ?, the fifth is 2/3. Geometric Harmony The numbers 12, 8, 6 represent the lengths of a ground note, the fifth above, and the octave above the ground note. Hence these numbers form a “harmonic progression.” A cube has 12 edges, 8 corners, and 6 faces. Fantastic! A cube is in “geometric harmony.” Figurate Numbers Numbers that can be arranged to form a regular figure (triangle, square, hexagon, etc.) are called figurate numbers. The Tetractys Special significance was given to the number 10, which can be arranged as a triangle with 4 on each side. Called the tetrad or tetractys. The significance of the Tetractys The number 10, the tetractys, was considered sacred. It was more than