Paradox

22 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PARADOXbeen divulged, we can infer that the demand for strictdeductive demonstration issued from spiritual perfectionism.Pythagoras taught that, as punishment, our souls areentombed in our bodies. Our souls yearn to join the divinecelestial bodies from whence they originated. Death does notbring release for the immortal soul because it transmigratesinto an animal that is just being born. After going throughanimals that dwell on land and in the sea and in the air, thesoul once again enters the body of a human being. Eatingmeat is therefore cannibalism.The purpose of life is to live in accordance with what ishighest in us. We revere our divine origin by observingtaboos, such as by abstaining from meat, alcohol, and intercourse.More positively, we express our desire for purity bypursuing wisdom. Pythagoras was the first to call himself aphilosopher (a lover of wisdom).The purest form of inquiry is mathematical. Here onefrees oneself from reliance on the senses. One proceedsimmaterially, deducing results from self-evident truths. Theuncertainties of the empirical realm are transcended.Pythagoras’s mathematical approach to nature yieldedstunning successes. He discovered musical intervals byinventing the monochord (a one-stringed instrument withmovable bridges). The ratios responsible for these consonantsounds seemed to be repeated by the positions of heavenlybodies. In addition to the mathematical relationships discoveredin natural phenomena, Pythagoras believed that theyexisted in ethics. Mathematics gains a foothold in moralitythrough notions of reciprocity, equality, and balance.Pythagoras used a geometrical representation of numbersthat made it natural to think that the world is generatedout of numbers. The Pythagoreans represented numbers by