Page:Science and the Modern World.djvu/55

 Pythagorean Brotherhood, and the mysterious rumours as to its rites and its influence, afford some evidence that Pythagoras divined, however dimly, the possible importance of mathematics in the formation of science. On the side of philosophy he started a discussion which has agitated thinkers ever since. He asked, ‘What is the status of mathematical entities, such as numbers for example, in the realm of things?’ The number 'two,' for example, is in some sense exempt from the flux of time and the necessity of position in space. Yet it is involved in the real world. The same considerations apply to geometrical notions — to circular shape, for example. Pythagoras is said to have taught that the mathematical entities, such as numbers and shapes, were the ultimate stuff out of which the real entities of our perceptual experience are constructed. As thus boldly stated, the idea seems crude, and indeed silly. But undoubtedly, he had hit upon a philosophical notion of considerable importance; a notion which has a long history, and which has moved the minds of men, and has even entered into Christian theology. About a thousand years separate the Athanasian Creed from Pythagoras, and about two thousand four hundred years separate Pythagoras from Hegel. Yet for all these distances in time, the importance of definite number in the constitution of the Divine Nature, and the concept of the real world as exhibiting the evolution of an idea, can both be traced back to the train of thought set going by Pythagoras.

The importance of an individual thinker owes something to chance. For it depends upon the fate of his ideas in the minds of his successors. In this respect