Definition:Pythagoreans

Definition
The Pythagoreans were a semi-mystical cult which dated from around $500$ B.C.E., founded by.

Can claim to be the world's first university.

It is feasible to suggest that their initial work in the field of geometry may have formed the basis of at least the first two books of.

The required course of study consisted of:
 * Geometry
 * Arithmetic
 * Music
 * Astronomy

These collectively became known, in the Middle Ages, as the quadrivium (fourfold way).

They were later supplemented by:
 * Grammar
 * Rhetoric
 * Logic

Similarly, these became known as the trivium (whence derives the word trivial).

For specious socio-political reasons based on the fact that their puritanical philosophy was at odds with the contemporary way of thinking, in $460$ B.C.E. their cult was attacked and destroyed.

Its survivors scattered, many of them fleeing to Thebes in Upper Egypt.

Notable Quotes

 * Number rules the universe.
 * -- Quoted in : They Say: What Say They? : Let Them Say


 * Everything is number.
 * -- Quoted in : Chapter $\text {A}.2$: Pythagoras (ca. B.C.)

Critical View

 * The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but, saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things.
 * -- in Metaphysics (Book $\text I$, Chapter $5$, ca. $300$ B.C.E.)