PYTHAGORAS

Pythagoras (570 B.C. - c. 500 B.C.) travelled widely, which influenced his way of thinking from many sources. Although legends say that Pythagoras developed a great part of his wisdom in Egypt, he was the great ancient Greek thinker who is credited with discovering the Pythagorean Theorem in geometry. The theorem states that the sum of the squares of the two legs of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse.

Pythagoras introduced philosophy as a way of life. His ideas influenced the thinking of other great thinkers (including Plato and Aristotle) who also largely contribute to our Western way of life today. It can be said that the foundations of the classical physical sciences and mathematics could be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophers and sages whose writings and recorded wisdom were rediscovered during the Dark Ages in Europe's history and led the Western Civilization into the Age of Enlightenment after the Renaissance (or "Rebirth").

The Renaissance, the ‘rebirth’ of literature, art, and learning that progressively transformed European culture from the mid‐14th century in Italy to the mid‐17th century in England, was strongly influenced by the rediscovery of classical Greek and Latin literature, and accelerated by the development of printing. The Renaissance is commonly held to mark the close of the Middle Ages (which is also called the “Dark Ages”) and the beginning of the modern Western world. The Dark Ages was due to the loss of classical learning. Enlightenment is a direct continuation of the Renaissance's intellectual tendencies.

The Age of Enlightenment (or simply the Enlightenment) is the era in Western philosophy and intellectual, scientific and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source for legitimacy and authority.

The re-examination of the ancient Greek culture by the post-dark age Western culture laid the very foundations of the intellect of the post-dark-age Western culture that has been the model for approaches to accurate thinking. Nonetheless, however, some ancient Greeks have posited some ideas that led the Western Civilization into the dark ages by way of a dogmatic view of life through static religious notions.

As a Greek philosopher, mathematician and religious teacher, Pythagoras established a community of followers who adhered to a way of life he prescribed. His school of philosophy reduced all meaning to numerical relationships and proposed that all existing objects are fundamentally composed of form and not material substance.

The principles of Pythagoreanism, including belief in the immortality and reincarnation of the soul and in the liberating power of abstinence and asceticism, and his theory of forms influenced the thought of Plato and Aristotle and not only contributed greatly to the development of the mathematics and Western rational philosophy, but also to its religion--Christianity.