Pythagoras, you old fraud!

So, it seems that Pythagoras' theorem (A squared+B squared=C squared) predates the man himself by 1000 years or so.
sauce

Shouldn't realy be that surprised that the Babylonians knew something like this, they were pretty advanced in lots of ways.

Wonder if we are gonna be changing the name anytime soon though?

a reply to: SprocketUK
Ancient India also knew about this at around the same time.
Its described in the Baudhāyana Śulbasûtra,an ancient vedic text.

The Baudhāyana Śulbasûtra is noted for containing several early mathematical results, including an approximation of the square root of 2 and the statement of the Pythagorean theorem.

en.wikipedia.org...


Its possible that the Babylonians traded with/mixed with the ancient Indians so the source of this knowledge may come from the same place.
Its funny how we often attribute loads of knowledge to our own modern era-but our distant ancestors had already worked out alot of highly advanced stuff.

Amazing what you can figure out when you are not distracted by the internet.

a reply to: SprocketUK

Wow, that’s interesting, SprocketUK! It reminds me of my maths teacher in secondary school. He was a large Greek who could hardly speak English, kept a bottle of Ouzo in his desk and threw whiteboard markers at us for being dumb. However, he was the best teacher I ever had.

In one class, he was trying to teach us trigonometry and the first port-of-call was Pythagoras. At the end of the lesson he advised us that if we can only remember one thing of his teaching, it is that theorem… He said that if we were ever to confront aliens, drawing that theorem would show them we are not as stupid as we look.

Food for thought…

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

Haha yeah, though in this case it was sometyhing I found out because of the internet.

a reply to: SprocketUK

By time Pythagoras was alive I don't even think anyone knew how to read cuneiform... I'm sure the equation was discovered on many different occasions, just that sinc ethe Greeks were held up to a high standard and documented a lot of stuff it passed down easier that way.

a reply to: Encia22

He sounds like an ace teacher

a reply to: strongfp

Yeah figures, thought it was interesting though

A Romanian lady in the same work place said years ago that some group had found that her people had partial ancestry from India. Greece is in the same zone as Romania so I guess it's more than possible Indian people ended up in Greece too.

Regardless of the original source, our system of counting is itself only a theory and everything that regulates our daily lives -including our concepts of time, distance, mass, volume and weight- are likewise flawed since those numbers were based purely upon the number of digits early humans possessed on their hands. But consider how differently our world would be had human beings evolved with flippers or bifurcated hooves instead of those ten fingers which formed the basis of our "deca-" numerical system? Thus, we are controlled by purely arbitrary assignments created for the sake of convenience, conformity and commerce! And that's precisely why all mathematically based concepts of science, physics and the works from Pythagoras to Einstein remain theories and nothing more! reply to: SprocketUK

a reply to: gsbltd


I think you might be misunderstanding the difference between a theory and a proof there as the Pythagoras theorem has been proven, mathematically. Hell in the article I posted it states it worked for the Babylonians (who used a base 60 number system)

a reply to: SprocketUK

Interesting as I had just watched this video.

Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Text - The Keys to Eternity Before the Book of the Dead


27:04 mark he starts his conclusion that the Ancient Egyptian Pyramid text is perhaps where we get some of our modern religious concepts and mentions Pythagoras maybe got his ideas from these pyramid texts
“There pretty good at triangle’s over there”

a reply to: Observationalist


There is a docummentary on Amazon called BAM that credits teh Egyptians with the creation of the golden ratio and goes some way to proving they used a metric system based upon divisions of the circumference of the earth

No I am not, since Pythagoras' theory was based upon mathematics which are themselves the product of an arbitrary counting system as explained above. There is one unequivocal law in all scientific fields: if a baseline is flawed then all results will be likewise erroneous. And this applies to anything that utilizes even binary numbers in those calculations. Another poster above referenced ET's, who are usually depicted as having only three digits on their "hands" which should logically result in a totally different system of technological applications; and perhaps that singular evolutionary difference is why it is accepted that they are more advanced than we... but of course, their existence is also just another theory yet to be absolutely proven. In essence, we human beings aren't remotely as clever as we believe ourselves to be when you consider how significantly theories impact our global presence! reply to: SprocketUK

originally posted by: gsbltd
No I am not, since Pythagoras' theory was based upon mathematics which are themselves the product of an arbitrary counting system as explained above. There is one unequivocal law in all scientific fields: if a baseline is flawed then all results will be likewise erroneous. And this applies to anything that utilizes even binary numbers in those calculations. Another poster above referenced ET's, who are usually depicted as having only three digits on their "hands" which should logically result in a totally different system of technological applications; and perhaps that singular evolutionary difference is why it is accepted that they are more advanced than we... but of course, their existence is also just another theory yet to be absolutely proven. In essence, we human beings aren't remotely as clever as we believe ourselves to be when you consider how significantly theories impact our global presence! reply to: SprocketUK

so I just messed around with a pen and paper and the theorem works in base 10, binary, base 4 and base 8...couldn't be bothered to go beyond that, show me your proof that it fails beyond decimal.

Of course it works in base 10 since those numbers are all divisible by themselves but a Pythagorean triple isn't possible when using all odd numbers. But beyond that you proved my original point that our entire system of mathematics is based upon the ten digits our ancient ancestors used when numbers were first created. And again, had we evolved lacking those phalanges/thumbs there may be no such thing as mathematics today. You must remember that the only difference between a theory and a theorem is that the latter is accepted as having been "proven", but the key word there is "accepted." But that acceptance in itself establishes nothing more than a universal consensus which may still be erroneous. This is where science intersects with all religions where belief systems are based purely upon faith where the primary definition of "faith" is the belief in something that cannot be proven... just like a minute, micron, kilometer or tonne are nothing more than accepted standards which are all based upon unproven theories. We believe these things to be true due to historical indoctrination and the fact that we humans require a degree of conformity just to exist in this world we have created for ourselves. But consider the chaos that will ensue if at some future point we are faced with the reality that everything we have based our civilization upon is in fact, wrong! reply to: SprocketUK

a reply to: gsbltd

No proofs? No surprise.

You made an assertion that Pythagoras's theorem only works in base 10, I gave you some examples that I had worked ourt in other bases and asked you to provide any evidence you could find where it fails...stop being boring dude, put up or shut up.

ETA you say it wont work with odd numbers? well you try adding 2 odd squares together to get an odd number? you do that and you will get some sort of Nobel prize.

cool
I recall having read that there was a mathematician back in those days, probably Greek who had the circumference of the ''globe'' figure out to within a couple of hundred miles. Globe mind you. This notion that the world was flat was not as widely believed as modern history says.

a reply to: Observationalist

Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Text - The Keys to Eternity Before the Book of the Dead

27:04 mark he starts his conclusion that the Ancient Egyptian Pyramid text is perhaps where we get some of our modern religious concepts and mentions Pythagoras maybe got his ideas from these pyramid texts
“There pretty good at triangle’s over there”.

Yep. The source that introduced religion to the Egyptians is the SAME source that gave them maths...along with the rest of us.

The information is being "given" to us from above. That's why even genius' usually claim that they come to their miraculous understandings while they are resting or in a state of sleep.

originally posted by: SprocketUK
So, it seems that Pythagoras' theorem (A squared+B squared=C squared) predates the man himself by 1000 years or so.
sauce

Shouldn't realy be that surprised that the Babylonians knew something like this, they were pretty advanced in lots of ways.

Wonder if we are gonna be changing the name anytime soon though?

Correct - Pythagoras was taught in Africa and the Middle East and brought back the theorem from his time there (pretty certain theorem is from the Egyptian Rhind Papyrus - pythagoras never claimed he was responsible for the theoremn named after him.

It was very common for mathematicians to travel to such places as mathematics was seen as a sacred religion and secret society based pratice where only a select few would be allowed to learn the more advanced stuff.

originally posted by: SprocketUK
So, it seems that Pythagoras' theorem (A squared+B squared=C squared) predates the man himself by 1000 years or so.
sauce

Shouldn't realy be that surprised that the Babylonians knew something like this, they were pretty advanced in lots of ways.

Wonder if we are gonna be changing the name anytime soon though?

Another fun piece of trivia ...

E=mc2 was known decades before Einstein. It was just considered a meaningless mathematical oddity. Einstein's genius was realizing that the formula was telling us that matter and energy are different forms of the same thing.