The Life of The Founder of Pythagorean Brotherhood

Pythagorean Brotherhood

Pythagoras of Samos is the founder of a religion called Pyhagoreanism where he developed the Pythagorean brotherhood (Pythagoras). It is known that Pythagoras made traveled a lot during his life, but he eventually settled down in Croton, Italy (Pythagoras). Throughout his life Pythagoras made discoveries in many fields, including math and medicine. The most well-known discovery by Pythagoras is where he proved that the sum of the squares of the two sides of a right triangle will equal the hypotenuse squared, also known as the Pythagorean Theorem.

Most people, who are not in a math field, know Pythagoras for his theorem that show that a2+b2=c2 for right triangle and they do not really know anything else about him. Although this is one of his big discoveries, he also has many others in multiple fields of study.

The Pythagorean Brotherhood was created with two separate groups, the mathematikoi (learners) and the akousmatikoi. (listeners) These groups were both followers of Pythagoras, but they had different beliefs. The mathematikoi thought was based around mathematics and science, while the akousmatikoi thought was based around religion and rituals (Pythagoreanism).

The Pythagoreans had many other beliefs outside of their two groups. They believed in Reincarnation, Vegetarianism, and they developed the belief that there were three kinds of life. They named these types of people, Theoretic, Practical, and Apolaustic (Pythagoreanism). They also believed that medicine was used to purge the body and music was used to purify the soul.

The Pythagorean Brotherhood ended up in a clash between political parties and it is said that Pythagoras escaped, but then died a few years later in 495 BCE. Although Pythagoras died, his beliefs continued on. The Brotherhood fell apart and faded away, but Pythagoreanism was picked up by Plato, who adapted to his beliefs. After Plato, it is thought that some of the ideas and beliefs of Pythagoreanism carried on to western civilizations and possibly use by the Freemasons (Pythagorean Brotherhood).

Throughout the years all known texts by Pythagoras have disappeared or were lost. This makes verifying his credibility challenging, but Aristotle and Plato believed that Pythagoras made the discoveries that are under his name. This is enough for me to believe that Pythagoras was definitely the creator of the proof for his Theorem as well as the discovery of many things in medicine, music and astronomy.