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Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras's name, or said "praise be to Pythagoras" if you're a bit of a fan of triangles.

But while Pythagoras was an important historical figure in the development of mathematics, he did not figure out the equation most associated with him (a2 + b2 = c2). In fact, there is an ancient Babylonian tablet (by the catchy name of IM 67118) which uses the Pythagorean theorem to solve the length of a diagonal inside a rectangle. The tablet, likely used for teaching, dates from 1770 BCE – centuries before Pythagoras was born in around 570 BCE.

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[-] PugJesus@kbin.social 536 points 9 months ago

Pythagoras CANCELLED for ACADEMIC PLAGIARISM

[-] Poggervania@kbin.social 163 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

3 hours later

“Pythagoras issues an apology video for stealing his crowning achievement from a piece of clay”

[-] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 41 points 9 months ago
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[-] Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 28 points 9 months ago

Tablet man sues Pythagoras for IP infringement

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[-] Colorcodedresistor@lemm.ee 204 points 9 months ago

literally 90% of human history has gone unrecorded, and what has been recorded usually gets destroyed, ransacked or deliberately destroyed, Caligula's pleasure barges, Tower of Babel, Library of Alexander. Humans have tried to keep knowledge retained. and some people take that personally.

remember when ISIS was at its peak they were just destroying artifacts like it was a kid in a candy store. And that's just been in the 35 years I've been alive.

when Rome fell it took another century for civilization to rediscover the technology and applied lessons used then.

and im a dumb idiot, I'm just making a broad skim, if you could ask a historian they'd likely tell you all the things humans have lost, purposefully destroyed or forgotten along the way.

[-] sailingbythelee@lemmy.world 45 points 9 months ago

It's even more amazing than that in the case of Rome. To cite just one example, by the time of Constantine I in the mid-300s CE, Rome could support armies totaling 650,000 men. The logistics and organization required to do that are staggering. After the fall of Rome, it would take until the time of Napoleon's Grand Armee in the early 1800s before numbers like that were fielded again. Even today, there are relatively few countries with an active military force of that size. They weren't just sitting around either. Rome was always fighting someone. It speaks to the ability of ancient peoples to organize and support truly massive endeavors and sustain them over literal centuries. I mentioned Napoleon's Grand Armee earlier. It was large, but it only lasted for about 5 years.

So, yes, a ton of technology was lost for a long time, both physical and social/organizational.

[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago

And during the second Punic war, when Rome mostly just controlled the Italian boot, Hannibal ravaged the peninsula for a decade but Rome just kept raising more armies to fight them. You could say that war wasn't very well understood at that time (like Hannibal was very good at battles, but couldn't turn that dominance into its own advantage), but it's still crazy to me that Rome just had an enemy army just roaming around, surviving on plunder and foraging, destroying the armies Rome sent to oppose it, but otherwise Rome was still able to function as a state to the point where they could raise, organise, equip (actually, they might have had to equip themselves at this point, I think the Empire providing that was one of the innovations they later started), train, move, and feed armies despite it.

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[-] DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 9 months ago

We've supposedly just rediscovered how to make Roman concrete in the last few years!

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[-] GCostanzaStepOnMe@feddit.de 185 points 9 months ago

Ah yes the Claytablorean Theorem

[-] Che_Donkey@lemmy.ml 51 points 9 months ago

Are you saying that IM67118 Theorem is not recognized?

[-] remotelove@lemmy.ca 26 points 9 months ago

Recognized or not, I will be wondering if Pythagoras was actually the Edison of his time....

[-] elscallr@lemmy.world 17 points 9 months ago

I have no doubt he discovered it independently and just knew better how to articulate its importance.

[-] NucleusAdumbens@lemmy.world 23 points 9 months ago

According to the article, the theorem was named for him out of respect for starting a school-society thing whose members in turn developed & popularized the theorem. So you should perhaps have at least some doubt

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[-] bobby_hill@lemmy.world 97 points 9 months ago

I thought it was well established that Pythagoras didn't actually derive his namesake theorem?

[-] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 94 points 9 months ago

It is. There's evidence of its use in the Old Babylonian period, evidence in 1800 B.C.E Egypt, India in 700-500 BCE, China during the Han Dynesty at least.

It's very simple to prove, and anywhere you find squares or triangles in architecture, it was used.

[-] someguy3@lemmy.ca 48 points 9 months ago

I'm assuming it was discovered multiple times independently. Pythagorean is just the one that wasn't forgotten.

[-] RichardB@lemmy.world 25 points 9 months ago

The Romans built off of Greek culture, Europe built off of Roman culture, the US built off of European culture. US math is very much based on Greek math (and US education in general). You may remember doing Greek proofs in school. Greek math was by no means superior to any other culture's, it just so happens that US culture descends from Greek culture.

[-] someguy3@lemmy.ca 24 points 9 months ago

But thank the gods we adopted Hindu-arabic numerals.

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[-] PugJesus@kbin.social 29 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It's a matter of debate whether he discovered it independently or not, though we've known he wasn't the first for a while.

[-] jarfil@lemmy.world 26 points 9 months ago

People can re-invent and re-discover things. It still happens all the time in this day and age of worldwide massive communications. I'd be surprised if the right angle theorem didn't get discovered thousands of times throughout history.

[-] Salamendacious@lemmy.world 25 points 9 months ago

Everyone learns something new everyday. How often have you seen a TIL and thought, "doesn't everyone know that"

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[-] BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 79 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras's name, or said "praise be to Pythagoras" if you're a bit of a fan of triangles.

What? Why? @Salamendacious@lemmy.world would you care to elaborate? Who curses Pythagoras? Fourier? Sure! Laplace? Fuck that guy AND the goat he rode in on! And don't get me started on Fermat and his silly margin note joke. But Pythagoras?

[-] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 25 points 9 months ago

Unless OP actually wrote this article, they aren't saying that. The post text body is literally just the first two paragraphs of the article.

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[-] Smokeydope@lemmy.world 19 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

who curses pythagoras?

At the very least that one guy who got drowned for blasphemy by the pythagoras cult, because he proved that the hypotenuse of a triangle with a base of 1 is an irrational number.

Also to be fair I imagine more people are cursing Euler for having his name stapled to half of every theorem and proof it seems.

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 16 points 9 months ago

Who curses Pythagoras?

Pythagoras said you shouldn't eat beans. Fuck him, I need my burritos.

[-] macracanthorhynchus@mander.xyz 15 points 9 months ago

Yes, but that led to my absolute favorite joke in Moby-Dick: the fart joke in chapter 1. (It's important to remember that the "Pythagorean Theorem" is A²+B²=C², but the "Pythagorean maxim" is 'Don't eat beans.')

"For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle."

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[-] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 58 points 9 months ago

I'm an idiot, no doubt about that, but fellas I gotta' say ancient Babylonian writing looks an awful lot like you just hit something with a weed whacker. Are we SURE?

[-] Salamendacious@lemmy.world 18 points 9 months ago
[-] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 46 points 9 months ago

Cool stuff but god damn I miss RedditIsFun showing me what links are before I opened them. I'm currently in bed next to my sleeping wife and that video was suddenly very loud.

[-] GbyBE@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 9 months ago

Sync for Lemmy also shows a preview of the YT video.

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[-] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 55 points 9 months ago

Reminds me of the mediaeval nun who erased a manuscript by Archimedes who was laying out the basics of calculus long before it was formally "invented" by Newton and Leibnitz because she needed space to write prayers.

[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 19 points 9 months ago

How do you erase a manuscript

[-] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 29 points 9 months ago

It was on parchment I believe, it was pretty common in the middle ages to scrape the ink off those and reuse them.

[-] Skyhighatrist@lemmy.ca 22 points 9 months ago

For anyone interested, that's called a palimpsest.

a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.

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[-] valen@lemm.ee 41 points 9 months ago

"Let no one's work evade your eyes, just plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize. But always please call it research." -- Tom Lehrer (Lobachevsky)

[-] hperrin@lemmy.world 18 points 9 months ago
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
1607 points (99.0% liked)

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