An Ode to Pythagoras

I came across an article in the newspaper today that proclaimed 'a recent study has shown that Pythagoras did not discover his famous theorem’. A couple of clarifications before I proceed further. First, for those who are not familiar, a newspaper is a physical handheld tablet where you turn pages instead of swiping them. It is widely used by people of my generation and is way more eco-friendly and multi-purpose as compared to digital tablets. Second, this ‘recent’ article was actually published way back in 2009. To cut a long introduction into 140 characters: there is a documented proof (picture above) that Mesopotamians knew about the theorem 1000 years before Pythagoras was born and the proof is a clay tablet (tablet again!) dated around 1600-1800 BC discovered with graphic representation and calculations of Pythagorean proportions. Well, the italic part was a little over 140 characters!

Everyone knows Pythagoras theorem. That’s pretty much the first thing we learn in geometry in school. In a right angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is sum of squares of the two sides.

Who can forget c^2 = a^2 + b^2 ?

Unfortunately, Pythagoras (who lived around 600 BC) did not leave any literature behind. But based on what his disciples and successors (Plato & Aristotle) wrote, Pythagoras was not just a mathematician. He was primarily a philosopher (started a philosophical school of thought called Pythagoreanism), astronomer (identified the planet Venus to be the morning & evening star), music aficionado (discovered Pythagorean tuning in music theory) and a climatologist (first one to divide Earth in five climatic zones). But unfortunately, he is known mostly for a theorem which most certainly he did not discover.

One of the most famous concepts of Pythagorean philosophy is the presence of opposites living in perfect harmony or balance. In Pythagorean literature, reality is usually presented as consisting binary opposites- odd & even, right & left, male & female, light & darkness, rest & motion…to name a few. Pythagoreans maintained that when these pairs live together in a balanced way, there is perfect harmony.

Perhaps that is the philosophical essence of c^2 = a^2 + b^2. The area of conflict (c) is minimum when a = b. It’s true mathematically. If a + b = 10, c is minimum when a = b = 5. For any of the other combinations of a, b adding up to 10 (such as 9 + 1, 2 + 8, 3 + 7), c will always be more.

There is nothing wrong in remembering Pythagoras for an equation he did not discover. Perhaps a better tribute to him would be to accept, encourage and respect duality- of gender, opinion, thinking- to achieve harmony.

Something to think about..