I have started Pythagoras by Kitty Ferguson. It was time for non-fiction and this looked potentially interesting. I have no idea where I got the book from. Here’s the blurb:
This is 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.Einstein said that the most incredible thing about our universe was that it was comprehensible at all. As Kitty Ferguson explains in this eye-opening new book, Pythagoras had much the same idea – but 2,500 years earlier.Though many know him only for the so-called Pythagorean theorem, in fact the pillars of our scientific tradition – the 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 and his ancient followers.Born around 570 BC on the cultured Aegean island of Samos, Pythagoras 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 recognised that hidden behind the confusion and complexity of nature are patterns and orderly relationships – they had glimpsed the mind of God. Some of them later found something in nature and numbers that was darker: irrationality, an unsettling and subversive revelation.Alongside the poignant human saga, Kitty Ferguson brilliantly evokes Pythagoras’ ancient world, showing how his ideas spread in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, and chronicles the incredible influence he and his followers have had on extraordinary people – from Plato to Bertrand Russell – throughout the history of Western thought and science.
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