Pythagoras: His Lives and the Legacy of a Rational Universe
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About this ebook
Kitty Ferguson
Kitty Ferguson has been writing and lecturing about science and scientists for over two decades. Kitty is the author of eight books; her 1991 biography Stephen Hawking: Quest for the Theory of Everything was written with Hawking's encouragement and help and was an international bestseller. She also was a consultant for Hawking s book The Universe in a Nutshell. Her most recent biography, Stephen Hawking His Life and Work/An Unfettered Mind, has been translated into 30 languages. Kitty has been interviewed by Forbes magazine, PBS's 'Fresh Air with Terry Gross', the 'News Hour with Jim Lehrer', and the BBC. She lectures widely in North America and Europe, and her appearances have included the Goddard Space Flight Center, the Hayden Planetarium in NYC, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, and many universities. Kitty and her husband divide their time between Cambridge, England and South Carolina.
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Pythagoras: His Lives and the Legacy of a Rational Universe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stephen Hawking: Remarkable Lives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Reviews for Pythagoras
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- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kitty Ferguson is a Juilliard School, Music Division graduate -- and a fabulous science writer. What better set of skills could we ask to tell us about the ancient Pythagoreans and their sense of unity of music and mathematics. My favorite is Chapter 16 "While the Morning Star Sang Together: Johannes Kepler." It has, on page 260, Ferguson's modern notation rendition of "Kepler's 1599 planetary chord." She doesn't ask, whether this is what Leonard Cohen referred to as "the secret chord that David played"? She does, convincingly argue that by laying out planetary distances in music notation gave Kepler visual means to 'see' and think about planetary motion. Even though it turned out to be 'wrong' music notation gave Kepler a 'good enough' model to make discoveries of elliptical orbital rotation that still stand.
Informative, well researched, and well-written...but "she cares for music, doesn't she"? to paraphrase Cohen. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pythagoras was born about 570 BC and grew up on the island of Samos...just off the Turkish Coast. He was clearly a remarkable character. Travelled widely in his younger years...to Egypt and apparently to Babylon. (Where it is possible that he picked up a few tips on Geometry). It is known that a thousand years earlier, (1804-1595 BC) the Bablyonians knew the pythagorean theorem; the value of Pi and could calculate square and cube roots. So quite possible that this knowledge survived to be learned by Pythagoras. He apparently spent 12 years there. He returned to Samos and took in some pupils and in 532 BC sailed to Croton near the "heel" of Italy.....Here he built up a following of disciples and contributed significantly to public life. Apparently one of their beliefs was that souls at death pass into other humans or animals..and thus this had implications for what Pythagoras did or did not eat. He was notorious for not eating beans. From a discovery about harmonious notes having a mathematical relationship, the Pythagoreans deduced that "all things known have a number". They lasted about 30 years in Croton...when there was an uprising against them and Pythagoras was murdered. (about 502 BC). His famous theorem (as mentioned above) was certainly not "invented" by him but in and after his own time he was widely attributed with it's discovery and popularisation.Pythagorean communities existed in and around the heel of Italy after Pythagoras's death and Plato (at the age of 38) went in search of this learning around the year 390 BC to the city of Tarentum. A community of Pythagoreans had survived there ....and Plato became acquainted with Archytas who was both an outstanding mathematician and scholar..and also an able civic leader. Apparently they stayed in touch. About half of the book is devoted to the legacy of Pythagoras....notably the kind of scientific tradition that builds on the idea that...at it's foundations the universe is rational and understandable and can be studied and measured. Some of the Pythagorean ideas were picked up by Plato and popularised by hime and later by Plotinus.It's worth mentioning that much of the information we have about Pythagoras was written much later by Porphry and Heraclitus (who claimed Pythagoras was a charlatan)...and there is very little direct information about the man. It didn't help that the learnings of his group were secret and pretty much died with him when the group were murdered at Croton.Kitty Ferguson, the author, is apparently a populariser of science rather than a Pythagorean scholar but seems to have researched this topic extremely well. I am impressed with the book and happy to give it 5 stars.
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