2125: What Gets Overlooked with the Term 'Pythagorean' Oct 9, 2020

The word 'pythagorean' for many might conjure up the phrase 'pythagorean theorem' from geometry. While it is true that Pythagoras was mathematical in nature, he was a cult leader. The he also gave his name to Pythagoreanism which involve worship of him, and believed in natural harmonies in the world expressed through numbers to the point that the followers at one point murdered a man who argued for the existence of √2, an irrational number unable to be written as a fraction. They also practiced vegetarianism, and not urinating towards the Sun. It is however, the formula for the perimeter of right triangles, a² + b² = c², for which the word 'pythagorean' is most often associated.

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