Thales versus Pythagoras ...
Reading is problematic.
Sure, i learn this or that ... but what i really learn is that there are at least a 100 more things i should know before opening my mouth on any topic.
Perhaps a vow of silence?
My friend August was keen on that subject some years ago. I wonder if he ever experimented? I wonder how it turned out?
Maybe i shall try that ... Wednesday through Friday of this week.
Anyway ... i need to know more about Thales, and i need to imagine Thales and Pythagoras debates. (They were not contemporaries i do not believe, Thales was first ... but it is an imagined debate). I can hear echoes ... of the "shut up and caculate" school of physics versus the cosmological theorists ... of the rationalist versus the romantic-sci-fi-metaphysician.
This about the Greeks ... they are the first people to sit down and "prove" mathematical truths, rather than just know and use them. That is ... the Egyptians and Babylonians were both familiar with the ratio of the sides of a right triangle ( A squared plus B squared equal C squared) ... but they did not think to sit down and prove the Pythagorean Theorum ... the Greeks are the first to think about proving such things.
I am certain that says something about our intellectual ancestry.
Added later - I checked and Pythagoras was probably a young man while Thales was still alive. It is said that Thales told him to go study math in Babylonia and Egypt to get out from under the sway of the Greek Homeric myth thinking of his day.
Sure, i learn this or that ... but what i really learn is that there are at least a 100 more things i should know before opening my mouth on any topic.
Perhaps a vow of silence?
My friend August was keen on that subject some years ago. I wonder if he ever experimented? I wonder how it turned out?
Maybe i shall try that ... Wednesday through Friday of this week.
Anyway ... i need to know more about Thales, and i need to imagine Thales and Pythagoras debates. (They were not contemporaries i do not believe, Thales was first ... but it is an imagined debate). I can hear echoes ... of the "shut up and caculate" school of physics versus the cosmological theorists ... of the rationalist versus the romantic-sci-fi-metaphysician.
This about the Greeks ... they are the first people to sit down and "prove" mathematical truths, rather than just know and use them. That is ... the Egyptians and Babylonians were both familiar with the ratio of the sides of a right triangle ( A squared plus B squared equal C squared) ... but they did not think to sit down and prove the Pythagorean Theorum ... the Greeks are the first to think about proving such things.
I am certain that says something about our intellectual ancestry.
Added later - I checked and Pythagoras was probably a young man while Thales was still alive. It is said that Thales told him to go study math in Babylonia and Egypt to get out from under the sway of the Greek Homeric myth thinking of his day.
posted by Thomas F. Schminke at 11:11 PM
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