Pythagoras, the guy who loved numbers

Pythagoras (c. 570 – c. 495 BC) is one of the strangest and probably the most influential philosophers who ever lived.

He is the father of Pythagoreanism, a mystic religion with strange rules. He became so influential not because of the Pythagorean theorem, which was definitely an achievement in mathematics, but because he thought that

All things are numbers

But how could this idea make him so influential? For a start, it doesn’t seem true, does it? For example, how could we describe friendship or love with numbers?

Anyone who was bored even once in a maths class would say this isn’t true:

“Maths is just boring. It’s not the way to understand the world. It is academic knowledge with no practical use in everyday life. We cannot make friends or become popular with numbers or maths. Speaking of Pythagoras, what is the Pythagorean theorem good for in everyday life?”

I must confess, there is something in this reasoning. For example, I haven’t used the Pythagorean theorem since I left school.

But the idea that we can get proper knowledge of the world through numbers is present in almost every part of our daily life. This idea has roots in the Pythagorean concept that things are numbers. The idea that the world has to be described with numbers if we want to understand it led to the mathematical description of natural phenomena. Sciences use mathematical models of nature because a guy, 2500 years ago, came up with the idea that we should use mathematics to describe and understand the world.

Of course, there are other ways to understand, explain and describe the world without numbers. For example: literature, philosophy, music. But with the last of these, Pythagoras would disagree. He was the first to find a relationship between musical harmonies and numbers.

Nowadays, describing things with numbers is rooted in our culture so deeply that we don’t even notice it. For instance, we even speak about literature in numbers: When was the author born? When did he die? How many pages does the book have? How many people read it? How much does it cost?

We express a large portion of our life with numbers, because we think, or at least we accept, that things are measurable and this measurement reflects the true nature of the things more or less correctly.

For example, our economic value in society is measured by our income. In theory, if we contribute more to the community, we get higher salaries. Our work is sold on the market, and if people are willing to pay a higher price for it, it means that it is more valuable for them. We know that this system is not perfect. For example, why does a woman get a lower salary than a man for the same work? Are we sure that all the highly paid executives deserve their salaries? Are we certain that an excellent football player deserves a higher salary than a dependable nurse?

We also accept that money is more or less a reliable way to measure success. If you don’t agree with it, think about how many poor people you can name who are considered successful by the majority of people. But isn’t money just a number that we attach to people to show their value from the viewpoint of society?

We are addicted to numbers. It is especially true in the business world.

There is no serious business presentation without numbers. At least one chart is necessary for projecting a professional image. More is better. We believe if the numbers are missing, the presentation is amateurish.

We believe that the better the company is, the better numbers it produces. It can lead to a situation like the crisis of 2008 when it turned out that some numbers that we trusted, for example credit ratings, did not reflect reality.

I could also mention numerous company scandals, the latest being Wirecard’s, where the highly paid leaders of the company, not for the first time in history, realised that actually it is easier to change the numbers that describe the success of the business than to improve the business itself.

Numbers can tell a story. In this case, they told a story that was very far from reality. Numbers can lie like nothing else.

Still, Pythagoras was right that numbers can describe certain segments of the reality better than our feelings or words. This concept — sometimes misused, and not, I believe, a universal tool for describing everything — still gave birth to a new era of scientific thinking and led to the development of technologies that made our lives safer, more convenient and freer than the lives of our predecessors. It all started with a guy who thought that all things were numbers.

#philosophy

#Pythagoras