29. Pythagoras Was a Literal Math Murderer
Pythagoreans were not just folk who liked math, but adherents of a weird faith that revolved around numbers. Pythagoras preached that the world was based on numbers, and taught his followers that reality and the entire universe were controlled by mathematical harmonies. He also preached that math was holy, and that numbers were sacred and godlike. The number seven, for example, was associated with wisdom, and eight was associated with justice. Ten was the universe’s holiest number, and the Pythagoreans worshipped it with a prayer that began: “Bless us divine number, who created gods and men“. Their most sacred symbol was the Tetractys, a triangle with ten points across four rows.
Pythagoras took math so seriously that supposedly murdered his most famous acolyte, Hippasus, because of it. Pythagoras’ math religion revolved around the belief that numbers explain life. Central to that was a belief that the universe could be explained by rational numbers that can be expressed as fractions. Then Hippasus demonstrated the existence of irrational numbers. Such numbers challenged and threatened to upend the worldview of Pythagoras and his followers. Unfortunately for Hippasus, although a genius, he was not very smart. He demonstrated his irrational numbers while on a boat that contained only him, Pythagoras, and a bunch of other Pythagoreans. Pythagoras wrestled Hippasus to the side of the boat, and dunked his head underwater until he drowned. He then tossed the corpse overboard, and warned his other followers to never mention what they had seen or heard.
