毕达哥拉斯

今天，我身边的打印机突然出来一份英文资料，题目是Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism毕达哥拉斯与毕达哥拉斯主义(学派)。拿起来四处询问，都不知道是谁打印的。毕达哥拉斯，听着很耳熟，细细看下去，突然发现原来就是西方发现勾股定理的那位哲学家兼数学家兼艺术家，这才回忆起小学数学课本里的注脚“勾股定理，在西方被称作毕达哥拉斯定理……”。为纪念这一点点即将逝去的童年的记忆，转载这篇文章，让我们来了解毕达哥拉斯这位伟大的智者。
Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism
Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and mathematician and founder of the Pythagorean school, flourished about 530 B. C. Very little is known about the life and personality of Pythagoras. There is an abundance of biographical material dating from the first centuries of the Christian era, from the age of neo-Pythagoreanism, but, when we go back to the centuries nearer to Pythagoras's time, our material becomes very scanty. It seems to be certain that Pythagoras was born at Samos about the year 550 or 560 B. C., that he travelled to Magna Græcia in Southern Italy about the year 530, that he founded there a school of philosophy and that he died at Metapontum in Sicily. The detailed accounts of how he invented the musical scale, performed miracles, pronounced prophecies, and did many other wonderful things, belong to legend, and seem to have no historical foundation. Similarly the story of his journey into Egypt, Asia Minor, and even to Babylon is not attested by reliable historians. To the region of fable belongs also the description of the learned works which he wrote and which were long kept secret in his school. It is certain, however, that he founded a school, or, rather, a religious philosophical society, for which he drew up a rule of life. In this rule are said to have been regulations imposing secrecy, a protracted period of silence, celibacy, and various kinds of abstinence. The time-honoured tradition that Pythagoras forbade his disciples to eat beans, for which various reasons, more or less ingenious, were assigned by ancient and medieval writers, has been upset by some recent writers, who understand the phrase, "Abstain from beans" (kyamon apechete), to refer to a measure of practical prudence, and not to a gastronomic principle. Beans, black and white, were, according to this interpretation, the means of voting in Magna Græcia, and "Abstain from beans" would, therefore, mean merely "Avoid politics"—a warning which, we know, was warranted by the troubles in which the school was involved on account of the active share which it took during the founder's lifetime in the struggles of the popular with the aristocratic party in Southern Italy. The school was instructed by its founder to devote itself to the cultivation of philosophy, mathematics, music, and gymnastics, the aim of the organization being primarily ethical. The theoretical doctrines taught by the master were strictly adhered to, so much so that the Pythagoreans were known for their frequent citation of the ipse dixit of the founder. Naturally, as soon as the legends began to grow up around the name of Pythagoras, many tenets were ascribed him which were in fact introduced by later Pythagoreans, such as Philolaus and Archytas of Tarentum.
It seems to be certain that, besides prescribing the rules that were to govern the society, Pythagoras taught:
a doctrine of transmigration of souls which he probably borrowed from the Bacchic and Orphic mysteries, the whole spirit of the doctrine being religious and ethical, intended to show, by successive incarnations of the soul in the bodies of different animals a system by which certain vices and virtues were to be punished and rewarded after death; in a general way, the doctrine that mathematics contains the key to all philosophical knowledge, a germ, so to speak, which was afterwards developed into an elaborate number-theory by his followers; and the notion that virtue is a harmony, and may be cultivated not only by contemplation and meditation but also by the practice of gymnastics and music.
he subsequent elaboration of these three central doctrines into a complicated system is the work of the followers of Pythagoras. The Pythagorean philosophy in its later elaboration is dominated by the number-theory. Being the first, apparently, to observe that natural phenomena, especially the phenomena of the astronomical world, may be expressed in mathematical formulas, the Pythagoreans were carried on by the enthusiasm characteristic of discoverers to maintain that numbers are not only the symbols of reality, but the very substance of real things. They held, for example, that one is the point, two the line, three the surface, and four the solid. Seven they considered to be the fate that dominates human life, because infancy ceases at seven, maturity begins at fourteen, marriage takes place in the twenty-first year, and seventy years is the span of life usually allotted to man. Ten is the perfect number, because it is the sum of one, two, three, and four-the point, the line, the surface, and the solid. Having, naturally, observed that all numbers may be ranged in parallel columns under "odd" and "even", they were led to attempt a similar arrangement of the qualities of things. Under odd they placed light, straight, good, right, masculine; under even, dark, crooked, evil, left, feminine. These opposites, they contended, are found everywhere In nature, and the union of them constitutes the harmony of the real world.
The account given by the Pythagoreans of the "harmony of the spheres" is the best illustration of their method. There are, they said, ten heavenly bodies, namely, the heaven of the fixed stars, the five planets, the sun, the moon, the earth, and the counter-earth. The counter-earth is added because it is necessary to make up the number ten, the perfect number. It is a body under the earth, moving parallel with it, and, since it moves at the same rate of speed, it is invisible to us. The five planets, the sun, the moon, and the earth with its counter-earth, moving from west to east at rates of speed proportionate to the distance of each from the central fire, produce eight tones which give an octave, and , therefore, a harmony. We are not conscious of the harmony, either because it is too great to be perceptible by human ears, or because, like the blacksmith who has grown accustomed to the noise of his hammer on the anvil, we have lived since our first conscious moments in the sound of the heavenly music and can no longer perceive it. In their psychology and their ethics the Pythagoreans used the idea of harmony and the notion of number as the explanation of the mind and its states, and also of virtue and its various kinds. It was not these particular doctrines of the school so much as the general notion which prevailed among the Pythagoreans of the scope and aim of philosophy, that influenced the subsequent course of speculation among the Greeks. Unlike the Ionians, who were scientists and related philosophy to knowledge merely, the Pythagoreans were religiously and ethically inclined, and strove to bring philosophy into relation with life as well as with knowledge. Aristotelianism, which reduced philosophy to knowledge, never could compete, in the estimation of its advocates, with Christianity, as neo-Pythagoreanism did, by setting up the claim that in the teachings of its founder it had a "way of life" preferable to that taught by the Founder of Christianity.

George S. Patton

For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.
一千年前，罗马人战后凯旋而归，享受喧闹巡游的荣耀。其中的号角手、乐师及怪兽，全来自被征服的国土，木头车盛满掳掠得来的金银珠宝。胜利者坐在敞篷的马车上，囚犯系着铁链在他面前走过，他的儿子们穿上白袍骑在马背上，奴隶站在胜利者背后拿着皇冠，在他耳边低诉：一切荣耀尽化云烟……

多读书读好书

经过两个月的努力，终于看完了南怀瑾老先生的《原本大学微言》。初看之时，有好几次都想放弃，觉得有些晦涩难懂，幸好硬着头皮一路走下来，才发现柳暗花明，引人入胜。老先生渊博的学识以及数十年来的人生阅历，再加上他独到的视角，将曾子的笔记《大学》演绎成一部煌煌数十万言巨著，旁征博引，曲径通幽，嬉笑怒骂皆成文章，真是国学大师的风范。2005年，给自己做一个读书计划，读下列五本书：
《原本大学微言》
《彼得林奇投资之道》
《丑陋的中国人》
《狼图腾》
《毛泽东传》

一本好书

这几天正在看南怀瑾老先生的《原本大学微言》，真是国学大师的风范，微言大义。其中对华夏五千年历史逐代略作点评，感触颇多，昨晚读到南北朝时期，突然觉得好笑，这一时期朝代更迭频繁，也出了一堆难得的活宝皇帝们，最有意思的是混一天下的隋王朝，上下两代帝王，都是华夏历史上的明星皇帝，尤其是隋炀帝杨广，被国人骂了一千多年，其实这个人很有意思，出巡至扬州时，自觉大势已去，对着镜子拍着脑袋说：”好头颅，谁当斩之？“呵呵，的确是难得的活宝。电影《手机》里的经典台词是“做人要厚道”，大家现在都把这当作一句玩笑话，其实是很有哲理的，可以用历史来求证。看看，历史上但凡篡位取天下者，都不会长久。春秋战国那乱糟糟的一堆就不必说了，都是短命的诸侯国，及至秦王灭周迁九鼎，到秦二世就被推翻。汉末曹氏父子篡汉建立大魏，从第三代曹睿开始就被玩弄于司马家族手中。司马家族的晋王朝更是风雨飘摇，政治腐败，道德沦丧，没多长时间就被赶到江南一隅，再经过南北朝的权力更迭，一批又一批的皇族被杀。好不容易杨坚一统中华，没想到儿子又杀父弑兄，不但把好端端的江山糟蹋了，而且还把那颗好头颅给了别人。五代时期又是一片混乱，赵匡胤还比较聪明，陈桥兵变后，怕重蹈前代帝王的覆辙，就杯酒释兵权，可惜国风羸弱，始终被北方游牧民族欺负，从北方退到南方，最终皇帝还被逼得跳了海。民国军阀混战又是如此。这几千年的历史不能算是偶然吧，感觉像那个笑话，偷来的汽车开不长，窃得的皇位也坐不长，好像总不那么理直气壮似的，皇帝老儿们心虚，王公大臣们也不服气，看不顺眼就推翻了事，反正那皇位都是抢来的。其实这天底下最难做的就是皇帝，左史记行，右史记言，这千秋功罪都要原原本本被记录下来，让后人评头品足，能真正做到“担当生前事，何计身后评“的有几人？想当年西京长安里的寻常巷陌，江南烟雨中的百姓人家，只要不是遭遇乱世，都过得平平淡淡，自得其乐，管它秦汉还是魏晋。所以做人要厚道，做皇帝更要厚道，用《大学》的话来说，就是”格物、致知、诚意、正心、修身、齐家、治国、平天下“，这一步一步，必须踏踏实实走过，方能成就大业。曾子的这些谆谆教导可能会让现在的teenagers笑掉大牙，他们追求的是刺激，而不是严肃，我想这是由于中国目前正处升平的时期吧，过些年，遭遇大萧条，就会慢慢沉下去了。这本好书，大家不妨读读，有些艰辛晦涩，但坚持读下去，相信会有收获的。