Practice question · True or false
The Pythagoreans kept their mathematics strictly separate from their religious practice.
Hints
- Consider what purpose they thought mathematical study served.
- Grasping proportion was treated as a way of ordering the soul, so the two were one project.
Show the answer
False
Why
False, the two were a single project. Understanding proportion was pursued as purification, which is why the school looks to modern eyes like a research programme and a religious order at the same time.
Practise Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism
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More questions on Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism
- A string of length 60 cm sounds a note. What length, in centimetres, sounds the octave above it?
- Why was the discovery of incommensurable magnitudes so damaging to Pythagoreanism?
- The Milesians identified the primary principle with a material substance, whereas the Pythagoreans identified…
- Arrange the steps of the classical proof that the square root of two is irrational.
- Which were features of the Pythagorean community?
- Match each musical interval to its string-length ratio.
- Sort each claim by whether the Pythagoreans could maintain it after the discovery of incommensurables.