Didn’t all kinds of antiquities get destroyed in Iraq? Totally irreplaceable stuff.

As you alluded, probably common in many places. How sad.

There's also the https://cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/about Obviously, losing a dimension isn't great but still pretty cool

I took the opposite tack.

You ain't shit, Pythagoras! You just wrote it down, you didn't figure it out, you absolute fucking fraud. We're taking your immortality back!

And he invented plagiarism too!

raise a cult

*cough* Elon Musk *cough*

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.

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!

🎶 They say Thomas Edison he’s the man to bring us into this century

And that man is me…

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/jt.2009.16

This paper was sourced in the article

A handful of people can be credited with discovering the theorem prior to Pythagoras, this isn't the first time this has come up, and incidentally there is almost no evidence to suggest Pythagoras did.

I think that this theorem is at least as old as the pyramids.

"Math and Murder Cult" sounds metal as hell. I'd join.

math murder cult = my new band

Pythagoras has superior copper. All other thagoras has inferior copper.

@mukt @Zerush A fair number of people worked out the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras existed. For some reason his name stuck for our culture.

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 .

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.