The Pythagorean belief in a “counter-Earth” foreshadowed the modern use of mathematics to predict unseen phenomena.
noted, “The Pythagoreans were … the first theorists to have attempted deliberately to give the knowledge of nature a quantitative, mathematical foundation.”
Of course, if your goal is to live in harmony with the universe, you need to know something about the universe. So even though Pythagoras basically established a religious cult, he and his followers still expanded the Greek quest to explain the cosmos.The universe is made from numbers Pythagoras chose numbers. Numbers, he taught his followers, are the seeds from which all reality grows. All members of the Pythagorean cult had to recite an oath crediting him with identifying the numbers “which contain the fount and root of ever-flowing nature.”consisting of the first four integers: 1, 2, 3 and 4. Added together, those numbers equal 10. Ten, Pythagoras concluded, is the “perfect” number, the number that holds the key to understanding nature.
But this picture had a problem. The Pythagoreans knew of only eight heavenly bodies: Earth, moon, sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. A ninth, outermost sphere transported the fixed stars. But to be perfect, the cosmos needed a 10th body. So the Pythagoreans proposed the existence of another planet, a “counter-Earth,” orbiting the central fire inside the orbit of the Earth. Nobody could see that planet because it was always on the other side of the fire.
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