TL;DR

Kosmos (κόσμος) originally means order — an arrangement, an adornment, a whole whose parts are in their right places — and the Pythagorean wager is that the universe deserves that name: its order is real, discoverable, and mathematical, and…

How it works

Start with the embarrassment, because every honest account of Pythagoras starts there. Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570–495 BC), who emigrated to Croton in southern Italy around 530 BC, wrote nothing. Not a line survives, and there is no good ev…

Key takeaways

Further reading