Ancient · c. 570–495 BC
Who influenced Pythagoras?
Influences and legacy
Number mystic whose cult of mathematical order quietly shaped all of Western metaphysics.
Pythagoras was influenced by Anaximander, and went on to influence Theano, Empedocles, Philolaus and Plato. That is 5 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Unknown author, Public domain See the whole map
Who was Pythagoras?
Pythagoras of Samos founded Pythagoreanism. Around 530 BC he settled in Croton in southern Italy and set up a school whose initiates reportedly swore secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic life. The teaching most surely his own is the transmigration of souls: every soul is immortal and passes into a new body at death. He may also have taught the music of the spheres, the idea that the planets move by mathematical ratios.
Antiquity credited him with the Pythagorean theorem, the five regular solids and the sphericity of the Earth, though some of this probably belongs to earlier thinkers or to followers like Philolaus. He reportedly was the first to call himself a philosopher. His ideas run through Plato's Timaeus, and Pythagoreanism later influenced Copernicus, Kepler and Newton.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Pythagoras?
1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.
- Anaximander c. 610–546 BC
Who did Pythagoras influence?
4 thinkers on this map draw directly on Pythagoras.
- Theano 6th c. BC
- Empedocles c. 494–434 BC
- Philolaus c. 470–385 BC
- Plato c. 428–348 BC
The line of teachers behind Pythagoras
The longest documented line of influence ending at Pythagoras runs 2 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
- Thales of Miletus
- Anaximander
- Pythagoras
Two steps away from Pythagoras
Indirect influences
- Through Anaximander: Thales of Miletus
The second generation
- Through Plato: Aristotle, Cicero, Philo of Alexandria, Plotinus, Augustine of Hippo, Marsilio Ficino, Arthur Schopenhauer, Simone Weil
- Through Empedocles: Gorgias
Contemporaries of Pythagoras
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Pythagoras, with no direct line between them.
- Xenophanes c. 570–478 BC
- Laozi c. 6th c. BC
- Anaximenes of Miletus c. 586–526 BC
- Confucius 551–479 BC
Pythagoras by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 1
- Direct followers
- 4 — #22 of 279 on this map
- Thinkers upstream
- 2
- Thinkers downstream
- 200
- Wikipedia languages
- 160 — #5 of 54 among ancient philosophers
- Card rarity
- Legendary
Questions about Pythagoras
- Who influenced Pythagoras?
- Anaximander.
- Who did Pythagoras influence?
- Theano, Empedocles, Philolaus and Plato.
- When did Pythagoras live?
- c. 570–495 BC. The map files Pythagoras under the ancient world.
- How rare is the Pythagoras card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Pythagoras in 160 languages, which makes it a Legendary card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More ancient philosophers
- Confucius 551–479 BC
- Aristotle 384–322 BC
- Plato c. 428–348 BC
- Socrates c. 470–399 BC
- Laozi c. 6th c. BC
- Cicero 106–43 BC
- Thales of Miletus c. 624–546 BC
- Marcus Aurelius AD 121–180