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Pythagoras (560 BC Samos- 480 BC Metaponto) left us this phrase: “Everything is in the numbers.” And, also, much more. Mathematician and philosopher, he considered that philosophy can be used as spiritual purification. He founded The Pythagorean Community.
The Golden Verses contain his doctrine and begin the path of a series of moralist philosophers. He is considered to be ranked among the pre-Socratic philosophers. His thinking influenced Plato (he had it inscribed at the entrance to his Academy “that no one enter here unless he is a geometer”), Galileo and Leibniz.
Galileo, recognized as the founder of modern physics, wrote in 1623 The Assayer, where he says that “nature is an open book where science must discover the alphabet that allows us to understand nature, which is mathematics. Nature is written in mathematical language “. And, according to Leibniz, “God, creator of universal harmony, is an infallible mathematician.”
It was founded in Crotona (Calabria) facing the Ionian Sea. It was made up of astrologers, musicians, mathematicians and philosophers, whose main belief is that all things are essentially numbers.
He gathered around him a secret society with a rigorous selection of disciples with these obligations or precepts:
He gave great importance to the autonomy of conscience, which must be able to offer its own laws through the domain of passions. No man is free if he does not know how to control himself.
He distinguished slaves from philosophers. He said that in life slaves are in search of reputation and profits and philosophers, on the other hand, are in search of truth.
He said that the two shortest words that require the most reflection are “yes” and “no.”
They are a poetic monument that contains the quintessence of Pythagoreanism. Some precepts are:
With his philosophy, Pythagoras begins a long series of moralistic philosophers who teach how to purify oneself from the impulse of passions.