• @[email protected]
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      131 year ago

      because understanding the history of our technology gives anthropologists a better way to determine what we were capable of in our earliest stages of civilization. because understanding the history of us is important to understanding who we are. do you really not see the value in knowledge?

    • @[email protected]
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      71 year ago

      This, and the fact that most stuff is invented by teams and not individuals. I think our tendency to name after a single person helps keep the hero/savior/Messiah complex of western society alive, and blinds us to the power of community and cooperation. It’s like “individual-washing” the past.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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    901 year ago

    This makes a strong case on the discovery side of the discovery vs. invention controversy.

    Ironically, my dad idolized Pythagoras and the notion of discovering a scientific fundamental to be remembered for thousands of years, for which the secret is not to actually do science, but raise a cult of scientists who attribute their inventions to you. Like Thomas Edison.

    • @[email protected]
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      91 year ago

      Not really. The Pythagorean theorem (or whomever you want to credit for it) assumes plane geometry. It’s not true in general.

      Plane geometry is the invention that makes all of the math work. The earth is not a flat plane (not even close to flat pretty much anywhere). If you want to do Pythagorean-like calculations between cities on earth, for example, you’ll get a much more accurate result with spherical geometry operating on geodesics. Unfortunately, spherical triangles not obey the Pythagorean theorem!

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      It was most of the Greeks. We credit Democritus with atomism even though the Greeks said it came from an earlier Phoenician, Mochus of Sidon. Even Democritus’s teacher doesn’t get credit.

      Democritus wrote it down in a way that survived.

      That’s it.

      • @[email protected]
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        131 year ago

        Edison, Watson/Crick, Musk, Jobs…I hope today it’s much harder to get away with being an idea stealing tool bag since the internet has competent archivers, sans working under a company that owns anything you make.

  • paraphrand
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    81 year ago

    What a classic situation. Some hype man taking credit.

  • मुक्त
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    141 year ago

    Isn’t this common knowledge that the Indians knew the theorem well before Pythagorus?

      • मुक्त
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        11 year ago

        Given what other comments are saying about him (cult leader appropriating works of others), I think the west/europe would do well not to associate themselves with him.

    • @[email protected]
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      61 year ago

      Yes and also I have a hard time believing the builders if the great pyramid didn’t understand it in some capacity either. They just didn’t have symbolic algebra to express it the way we do .

      • मुक्त
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        1 year ago

        There are mentions of pythagorian triplets in pyramid era Egypt, and in all fairness, ancient Greeks didn’t have symbolic algebra either - it is a fairly recent form of expression.

        And, as far as I know, ancient Indians were actually writing mathematical expressions in full prose form - word problems et al.

  • @[email protected]
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    251 year ago

    I thought it was pretty well established that Pythagoras didn’t invent it, he was just the leader of a Math and Murder cult so he stole it

  • @[email protected]
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    71 year ago

    And garden of eden as well as the story with a baby in a basket in Nil, are already in Atrahasis epos, from which Gilgamesh epos copied btw.