- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
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another nail in whitey’s coffin. when will this woke history end
Pythagoras wasn’t white. 😎
and another nail in whitey’s coffin. when will this woke history end
I don’t know, this painting of him looks pretty white (please ignore that it was made in the 1920s by an American who had probably never been to Greece)
I feel like at this point I’ve seen this story in 1,000 year old reposts.
This makes a strong case on the discovery side of the discovery vs. invention controversy.
Ironically, my dad idolized Pythagoras and the notion of discovering a scientific fundamental to be remembered for thousands of years, for which the secret is not to actually do science, but raise a cult of scientists who attribute their inventions to you. Like Thomas Edison.
raise a cult
*cough* Elon Musk *cough*
Edison, Watson/Crick, Musk, Jobs…I hope today it’s much harder to get away with being an idea stealing tool bag since the internet has competent archivers, sans working under a company that owns anything you make.
🎶 They say Thomas Edison he’s the man to bring us into this century
And that man is me…
It was most of the Greeks. We credit Democritus with atomism even though the Greeks said it came from an earlier Phoenician, Mochus of Sidon. Even Democritus’s teacher doesn’t get credit.
Democritus wrote it down in a way that survived.
That’s it.
Not really. The Pythagorean theorem (or whomever you want to credit for it) assumes plane geometry. It’s not true in general.
Plane geometry is the invention that makes all of the math work. The earth is not a flat plane (not even close to flat pretty much anywhere). If you want to do Pythagorean-like calculations between cities on earth, for example, you’ll get a much more accurate result with spherical geometry operating on geodesics. Unfortunately, spherical triangles not obey the Pythagorean theorem!
I knew Pythagoras was smart but I never knew he invented time travel. So cool!
And he invented plagiarism too!
nah he probably stole that as well.
Poor poor Plagiar, everything he invented people stole and took credit for.
The Plagiarian theorem is a real bummer.
I took the opposite tack.
You ain’t shit, Pythagoras! You just wrote it down, you didn’t figure it out, you absolute fucking fraud. We’re taking your immortality back!
Quick! Change all the textbooks to “clay tablet theorem”!
Why not call it the Summerian Theorem ? Or Arabic/Persian/Philistine Triangulation Theorem ?
People used to live longer back then, just look at the bible.
It always seemed weird to me that it would be formally developed so late. Like I’ve taken multiple trigonometry courses and can’t even define trigonometry let alone make sense of most of it, but the Pythagorean theorem is a purely intuitive thing everyone does regularly. The first person to take a diagonal shortcut while walking understood it. It should have been the first thing mathematics codified after basic arithmetic.
There is lots of evidence of the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras. The attribution of the rule to him comes centuries after he lived. So likely he worked on codifying and proving the relationship using the Greek deductive and axiomatic system.
I imagine it’s been developed and lost periodically, and some people are averse to irrational numbers. Greece just had continual credit in our intellectual pedigree (as opposed to, say, the Babylonians who had more advanced trig than the Greeks before them and the Greeks were aware of them in some ways).
I think you also need a lot of rectangles and squares to find it necessary. I imagine buildings, but even today a lot of materials are cut to fit (also, the building I am in is not rectangular along any dimension). Maybe legal rectangular plots of land? Idk
the Pythagorean theorem is a purely intuitive thing everyone does regularly.
Excuse me, what?
I take it you haven’t read Plato?
The first person to take a diagonal shortcut while walking understood it.
Taking a diagonal shortcut means that you understand
a + b > c. That’s a far leap from being able to prove thata^2 + b^2 = c^2.
It is if you needed to collect taxes and wanted a way to measure 📐
Ok so
because understanding the history of our technology gives anthropologists a better way to determine what we were capable of in our earliest stages of civilization. because understanding the history of us is important to understanding who we are. do you really not see the value in knowledge?
people joined a cult because of this theorem. that must be awkward
Cuneiform scripts were frequently coppied by scribes, so the theorem could be even older
I think that this theorem is at least as old as the pyramids.
The recent “Fall of Civilizations” podcast talks a lot about the history of the pyramids. They may still have known a lot about geometery, but the slopes and angles involved in the pyramid building seem to have been trial and error as much as anything
A few days ago I was building a Lego set and had to go back 10 steps because of a mistake and that made me very angry.
The pyraamids are way more complex and accurate as been build only by trial and error. It’s architects knew exactly what they were doing and also geometric theorema way more complex as the one of “Phytagoras”, as shown also in other ancient buildings, which are still difficult to reproduce by modern architects.
What makes you say that? I’m not an expert. Accurate geometry or not, the pyramids are pretty cool. What about them means it couldn’t have been trial and error?
https://www.si.edu/spotlight/ancient-egypt/pyramid
About halfway up, however, the angle of incline decreases from over 51 degrees to about 43 degrees, and the sides rise less steeply, causing it to be known as the Bent Pyramid. The change in angle was probably made during construction to give the building more stability
Yes, the bent pyramid, but that say nothing, maybe simply a design of an bad architect. They always exist, even today.
A handful of people can be credited with discovering the theorem prior to Pythagoras, this isn’t the first time this has come up, and incidentally there is almost no evidence to suggest Pythagoras did.
Good to know! TBH, I’m specifically excited to see it was present in the fertile crescent. I really like clay tablets.
Quite possible. Ancient Greeks really liked Akkadians.
Quite possible.
I’m not sure I understand this statement? Isn’t that what the article says?
Oh, right.
Isn’t this common knowledge that the Indians knew the theorem well before Pythagorus?
Yes and also I have a hard time believing the builders if the great pyramid didn’t understand it in some capacity either. They just didn’t have symbolic algebra to express it the way we do .
Given what other comments are saying about him (cult leader appropriating works of others), I think the west/europe would do well not to associate themselves with him.
And garden of eden as well as the story with a baby in a basket in Nil, are already in Atrahasis epos, from which Gilgamesh epos copied btw.
I thought it was pretty well established that Pythagoras didn’t invent it, he was just the leader of a Math and Murder cult so he stole it
“Math and Murder Cult” sounds metal as hell. I’d join.
math murder cult = my new band
Send me a demo. Or hell I’ll play bass
Simmer down Hulk Hogan.
Right on brotha
What a classic situation. Some hype man taking credit.
This is one of the reasons why we shouldn’t name things after people.
This, and the fact that most stuff is invented by teams and not individuals. I think our tendency to name after a single person helps keep the hero/savior/Messiah complex of western society alive, and blinds us to the power of community and cooperation. It’s like “individual-washing” the past.
