University of Athens | Faculty Of Sciences | Department of Physics | Section of Nuclear & Particle Physics | Research | Nuclear Theory
Artificial Intelligence On Nuclear Physics : : Pythagoras Artificial Intelligence Modeling Project

Numbers Rule The Universe

Pythagoras of Samos (ca. 580 B.C.- ca. 500 B.C.)

Pythagoras of Samos

The School of Athens

Pythagoras

(Sanzio, Rafaello. The School of Athens (detail). 1509. Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican.)

Pythagoras, representing Arithmetic, is sitting in the foreground. The two men who are jostling to look over his shoulder recall figures in Leonardo da Vinci's unfinished Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi. Raphael had occasion to study Leonardo's picture during his stay in Florence.

Science Quotes by Pythagoras

All is number.
Quoted in Robert J. Scully, The Demon and the Quantum (2007), 7.

Number is the within of all things.
Attributed as a concept rather than actual words (none of the original writings of Pythagoras have survived). In L. A. Michael, The Principles of Existence & Beyond (2007), 16.

Reason is immortal, all else is mortal.
Quoted in Robert J. Scully, The Demon and the Quantum (2007), 11.

There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There is music in the spacing of the spheres.
Quoted by Aristotle in Metaphysics. In The Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Biography (2003), 1250.