Pythagoras to Plato: The Ancient Greek Revolution in Human Thought

Numbers and mathematics were in use long before Pythagoras was born in the mid-sixth century BC, but few if any suspected that beyond practical use these were keys to unlock doorways to vast hidden knowledge. The discovery made by Pythagoras or his earliest followers—that there is pattern and order hidden behind the apparent variety and confusion of nature and that it is possible to understand it through numbers—was one of the most profound and significant discoveries in the history of human thought.

Humanities West highlights this fundamental shift by focusing on that initial jolt of intellectual energy, even though most of the details have been lost or distorted, and on three exemplars of the Pythagorean emphasis on math and on logic: Philolaus, Archytas and Plato.

The Pythagorean intellectual revolution spread by these early pioneers progressed until the advances in math and in detailed observation reached a critical mass, causing one scientific revolution after another—accomplished by scientists such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Einstein and Heisenberg, who were all influenced by Pythagorean ideas (including the idea of not trusting traditional explanations―even Pythagorean ones).

We know very little about the man Pythagoras and the philosophy he lived by and taught, but the revolutionary influence on human thinking of one great insight, carried forward by such geniuses as Philolaus, Archytas and Plato, has shaped our world ever since. Humanity has only rarely crossed such a threshold.

Kitty Ferguson will speak on "What Do We Really Know about Pythagoras?"; Edward Frenkel will speak on "From Pythagoras to Plato: Philolaus and Archytas"; Joshua Landy will speak on "Plato’s Use of Irony: How does Plato Really Teach us?"

In association with Humanities West.

Photos courtesy the speakers.

February 23, 2023

Speakers

Kitty Ferguson
Author, The Music of Pythagoras: How an Ancient Brotherhood Cracked the Code of the Universe and Lit the Path from Antiquity to Outer Space, and Pythagoras: His Lives and the Legacy of a Rational Universe

Edward Frenkel
Professor of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley; Author, Love and Math

Joshua Landy
Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French, Professor of Comparative Literature, co-director of the Literature and Philosophy Initiative, Stanford University; Co-Host, "Philosophy Talk"

George Hammond
Author, Conversations With Socrates—Moderator

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[AlekseiTepljakov]

Frenkel's talk was fantastic. It seems that it is eventually inevitable that we find ourselves knocking on the door of the unknowable and by the same token asking for infinite knowledge. From my humble point of view, that's the whole idea of the Universe. The experience, mathematics, or engineering, or literature, or music, or anything, any kind of activity where imagination is essential, is already drawing from this. Knowing this, even without direct experience of the infinite, is where the best of us thrive.

[TCME]

The interesting thing is that you can easily represent strings with square roots. As he mentioned, the square root of two is just the diagonal of a square. You can represent them visually and with links quite easily just not as a ratio

[fretnesbutke]

There's a fascinating, tantalizing mystery about Pythagoras, who often is considered the father of Western music. His ideas may have been infused with Eastern teaching, specifically Indian. Long before Alexander, the Achaemenid Persian Empire connected Greece to India, and established a cultural cross fertilization that lasted for centuries. This may be the source of his ideas of reincarnation, vegetarianism and of numbers being the ground of the universe.
All 3 speakers were wonderful, by the way.

[boothvrstudio]

Really enjoyed the presentation. Look into it…Descartes stole the coordinate plane idea from Fermat. My university history of math professor told my class this detail in 1997.

[nixl]

Something is lost in the translation of the first sentence of the slide at 35:50. One cannot figure out what that sentence means and the explanation below does little to help.

[MoiLiberty]

1:03:24 Intuitively, I've known we are in a time closer to the Homeric time than any post-Socratic time.

Haven’t watched it yet. Any reference to the Islamic civilization that preserved the Greeks work?

[knioutom]

DOUBT EVERYTHING BUT SEEK THE TRUTH !!!

[gravity]

Assuming we know beauty and what it is not and if we agree; How do you know what it is known without the eyes to see it? for my eye of beauty could be not the same as yours. beauty could be anything that I say is beautiful. And maybe I’ll allow you see or maybe not. Only time will tell…. And if you do think you finally see beauty, would you be honest to me about this beauty because I’ll know for a fact if you see it for yourself.

[MoiLiberty]

1:09:00 Joshua Landy is a sophisticated sophist, an entertainer akin to a clown.