Reconstruction
Pythagoras
c. 570–495 BCE
MathematicsPhilosophyMusicAncient Greek
Founder of a secretive community that treated number as the structure of reality.
Reconstruction. Later coins and busts are conventional; no contemporary likeness survives.
Why they still matter
The idea that the world is mathematically ordered begins as a religious conviction here.
The world they thought in
Samos and later Croton in southern Italy.
The questions they worked on
Number and order
Is the world mathematically structured, or do we impose that?
Take this further
Ponderers is the historical layer. A rabbit hole brings the same question into what people are arguing about now.