[n4r9]

If I recall rightly, it's not even that clear that a single person named Pythagoras really existed. If he did then he never wrote anything down, there are few contemporary accounts of his life or work, and what details there are contradict each other. And, as you say, he was chiefly interested in things like life after death as opposed to mathematics.

[dr_dshiv]

This level of skepticism flies in the face of references to Pythagoras across multiple contemporary authors. Keep in mind that it is damn hard to prove something in the 6th century BC with the same level of evidence as today.

But Heraclitus, for instance, was contemporary and accused him of plagiarism and trickery. Why abuse a person that doesn’t exist? Ion of Chios was contemporary and said that he authored Orphic hymns.

The Orphic hymn to Apollo proclaims “your resonance attunes the whole globe”. Now, we don’t know that Pythagoras wrote that. We can’t prove that sort of thing. But it sure seems Pythagorean.

Did you know that Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton all claimed to be Pythagorean?

The man is a legend. Embrace the legend. He wrote lots of things down but he either destroyed it to avoid creating a doctrine or it was destroyed during one of the different massacres of Pythagoreans. Because that happened.

[n4r9]

The evidence for figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Socrates and Heraclitus is far more compelling than it is for Pythagoras. There is a singular lack of evidence and sources for his existence.

No one is denying that a cult named the Pythagoreans existed, that many of their writings are preserved, and that they influenced Copernicus etc ...

Heraclitus was notorious for his cutting critiques of predecessors. There are a total of three very brief mentions of Pythagoras in fragments of his work (fragments 40, 81 and 129). This is not really enough to go on - it's not clear whether he's criticising someone he's met in person, some learnings that he's heard through a third party, or a cult figure that was invented and idolised by the Pythagoreans.

[dr_dshiv]

Is there any evidence supporting the hypothesis that Pythagoras was invented?

[dr_dshiv]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42026572

[n4r9]

I'm just saying it's not very clear that the figure of Pythagoras existed. It's like Robin Hood or King Arthur - maybe there was a historical person on which the mythology is based, but at this point we just don't know with any certainty.

[N3Xxus_6]

This just isn’t true either. There are contemporary sources who talk about him.