THE NUMBER OF THINGS any aE CULE OT | and Humming Strings by EVANS G.VALENS“There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There ts music i: the "pacing of the spheres.” —rvmaconas THE NUMBER OF THINGS Pythagoras, Geometry and Humming Strings by EVANS G. VALENS Mlustrated with diagrams This is a book about ideas and about the ways in which ideas grow and spread. ti also the story of a unique Greek philoso- her. Pythagoras of Samos, whose remark bly modem mathematical and sciemiic speculations fist came to life more than fo thousand years ago. The origins of rmodern music and cosmology can also be ltaced to the genius of Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagorean. The Number of Thines is concerned with those things which cam be described with eumbers. To the Pythagorcans, for example, the numerical ratio 1:2 meant 2 ‘musical cctave. Another set of numbers = 3:4:5 — defined a particular triangle ‘Not only did things have numbers; num- bers themselves had shape and substance ‘The Pythagoreans spoke of sol nambers and plane numbers of triangular numbers ‘and oblong numbers. For them, aumber was the restriction which gave form to the luniverse; and their conviction that physi- cal substances and systems can be ex presed in terms of numerical or mathe ‘matical equations eventually became the fundamental assumption of mathematical physics. (continued on beck fap) 140+ $495 the number of things PYTHAGORAS, GEOMETRY AND HUMMING STRINGSELEMENTS OF THE UNIVERSE Ls] PYTHAGORAS, GEOMETRY AND HUMMING STRINGS the number of things by EVANS G. VALENS New York m E. P. DUTTON & CO., INCFor MGV and EGY Printed in the U.S.A. ~ Ne pat of th ny form witht permission in writing from te pacer, excep ty sreviewer who wishes to qoote bret p ik may be eprodoced i + mcsion sa magsnine. neospaper o bee ly im Canada by Clarks, Irwin & CompanyDigitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation rchive.org/details/numberofthingspy00vale INTRODUCTION What makes an idea exciting? You may admire an idea for its ingenuity or for its simplicity and still remain indifferent to it, The idea may be deep-rooted, straightforward, original, significant, and, at the same time, dreary There is one breed of idea, however, which is never pallid. Robert Frost called it the “gathering” idea, one which irresistably gathers other ideas to itself Of all “ simplify as they gather. How can a cluster of ideas grow in size and in simplicity at the same time? Newton, for one, showed us how. Why does a stone fall? Why does the path of a bullet curve? Why does the moon seem to hang in the sky? And why do the oceans rise and fall? Newton added these questions answered them all. He had begun by playin he concluded by explaining the orbit of Mars, His law of universal gravitation bound them all together, for it is one and the same force that governs the tides, the swing of a pendulum, and the paths Of bullets and falling stones, of the moon and of the planet Mars. The first men to be obsessed with the search for the “gathering” idea were the Pythagoreans, who lived in Greece and Italy 2,000 years before Newton was born. Their search was founded upon conviction that the laws of nature are intrinsically simple. The search was remarkably fruitful. The purpose of this book is to show how the ideas of Pythagoras and his followers grew, how ‘one idea Jed unexpectedly to a second, seized a third, spawned a ually encitcled or bound together 2 dozen others athering” ideas, the most powerful are those which ther and, with a single idea, with pendulums and fourth, and e The ideas are old, but many still seem quite fresh today. None of them are trivial. Some gathered dust for many centuries, and8 INTRopucTION then proved to be too new for their rediscoverers to aceey generated stinging insights the moment they were reexamined. When I first became intrigued by Pythagoras of Samos and his intellectual progeny, I was, 1 think. rather like a newly hatched spider encountering a full-blown web. Not knowing quite what to make of it The threads of Pythagorean argument and discovery and inven- tion are like the threads of a web. Follow any one and it seems to lead farther and farther afield until suddenly you come across a familiar intersection from a new angle, or find yourself back at the center. There are threads of music and threads of geometry, threads of religion and threads of cosmology and astronomy, and they all attach to and support one another. ‘The Pythagorean web of ideas does not form a precise or perfect design. There are dangling threads and ragged edges. But the whole thing hangs together, and even the Inase threads may gather dew drops which light up in the sun Evans G. VALENS CONTENTS Three, Four, Five ‘On the Shape of Numbers The Knowing Gnomon Dark Secrets and the Golden Section Fly’seye View The Pre-Pythagorean Theorem A Sine of the Time Proof and Puzzle From Squares to Crescents Cutup Means, Geometric and Golden Stars and Doubled Cubes Geometry for Listening Means and Ends Harmony and Harmonies Music ofthe Spheres Codathe number of thingsTHREE, FOUR, FIVE l Three and four, itis often said, are seven But I ask you: suppose I push a small block of granite 3 yards to the east, and suppose you are kind enough (and strong enough) to push it 4 yards northward at the same time. What will happen tw the granite? It will move just 5 yards. Magic? It must have seemed so twenty-five hundred years ago. Accord ing to tradition, the temple builders of Egypt had this magic tamed in the form of a rope 12 units long. It was knotted to divide it into sections measuring 3, 4, and S. By shaping the rope into a triangle, the harpedonapiae—the surveyors, or “rope stretchers"—could lay out on the desert sands of Egypt a perfect comer for a pyramid. ie ‘The Egyptians apparently did not know why this magic worked, but engincers many centuries later were astonished at the perfec tion with which the great pyramids were squarely set in the sand. The mystery of this triangle is still impressive. Why should a figure with sides of 3, 4, and 5 units form an exact right-angled ‘comer? The familiar answer is that in any triangle containing a right angle:14 we NumeeR oF THINGS Squares built on the two sides which form the right angle have the same total area as that of a square built on the third side. ‘The truth of the statement can be seen by slicing up the large square and rearranging the pieces. Cut from this square a triangle identical with the original tri- angle. Move it to the opposite side of the square. = & Cut off a second, identical triangle and move it to the opposite side. The result is the wo smaller squares. ‘The old Egyptian rope trick can be performed in another manner, with delightful results, by stretching a guitar string around three nails. The nails are separated by distances of 3, 4, and $ units. Taree, Four, rive 15 The string can be tightened by a set-screw at one corner, and small pulleys at the other two corners will help keep the tension equal oon all sides. When the three strings are plucked they will sound a musical chord, an inverted minor triad. If the longest side is tuned t0'G, the other two sides will sound B and E. This is the chord sounded by the top three strings of a guitar. ‘Now, this is a most unlikely event. An assortment of guitar-string triangles of random shapes is not likely to produce even one sono- rous triad, Why should the simplest of right-angled triangles give tus one of the most common musical chords? The reason is hidden behind the fact that the Greck scholar and mystic for whom the 3 = 4 : 5 triangle is named is also responsible for defining the basic intervals that determine the musical scale we know today. “There is geometry,” he said, “in the humming of the strings.” Pythagoras of Samos was usually looked upon in his time as something of a crackpot. His most devoted followers said he was the son of Apollo, god of music and poetry. He was a vegetarian who believed in the transmigration of souls and the holiness of the number fen, But he was also the founder of the science of music and the theory of numbers. He was apparently the first man known to use experiment and measurement in his search for natural laws. and for this he has been called the patron saint of science Most of Pythagoras’s accomplishments stem from his imagina- tive and peculiarly productive way of thinking about numbers.ON THE SHAPE OF NUMBERS 2 To Pythagoras in 520 n.c., and to the “Pythagoreans” who were his followers during the next few centuries, the important secrets of nature could all be expressed by simple relationships among whole numbers. Numbers were very real to the Pythagoreans, and they had dis tinctive shapes. The four most important kinds were triangular numbers, square numbers, oblong numbers, and gnomons The triangular numbers are one, three, six. ten, fifteen, and so forth, and they are written like this Each triangular number is the sum of ail successive numbers up to some point. The fourth triangular number, for example, is 1+ 243+ 4—10, like bowling pins. Square numbers are those which ean be fitted into a square, such fas one, four, nine, and sixteen. Each is the sum of successive odd numbers: 1-3 +54+7=16 Oblong numbers are the sums of successive even mumbers. 24+446=12 24+44648=20 ON THE smare of MuMBERS 17 Each oblong number is also the product of two suecessive num- bers 3-4—12 45=20 The gnomons are all the odd numbers and they are written in the shape of a “gnomon,” or carpenter It seems obvious enough to us that odd numbers are not the same as even numbers, but the first realization that odd and even numbers function quite differently was an original and important contribution to basic mathematical theory ‘The Pythagoreans called odd numbers male and even numbers female. They also associated the number five with marriage be- ccause it represents the union of the first even number, two, with the first genuine odd number, three. For similar reasons. a right- angled triangle with sides of three, four, and five was called “the figure of the bride. ‘The number one was a very special case, In multiplication, one functions in the same way that our present- day zero functions in addition: any number may be multiplied by ‘one without changing its value To the Pythagoreans, one signified “unity” in every sense of the word: it was a single united whole, indivisible, unified, and har. monious. It could function as the first triangular number or as the first square number. It was the “source,” or “generator,” of all other numbers, which are composed of ones. Therefore, one was defined as “oddeven. ‘The Pythagoreans’s special feeling for the number one partly18 THe NUMBER OF THINGS explains—or is partly explained by—their strong preference for whole numbers, or integers. Anything less than a whole number was fragmentary and “worse than ignorance.” They called one the “monad of intelligent fire alone in the dark of unlimit Aside from gnomons and triangular, square, and oblong num- bers, the Pythagorcans also had pentagonal, hexagonal, heprag- onal, and linear numbers. A linear number is what we call a prime: it has no divisors other than itself and one. Linear numbers were written as a single line because they could not be drawn as a series of similar patterns. Eratosthenes in 240 nc. designed a method: ve" —for sifting out primes: Write down a series of numbers, beginning with two. Circle two and cross out every second number. @Q3rs £71 ¥9 wi je 13 Ie Then circle the smallest surviving number, three, and cross out every third number. Circle the next untouched number, five, and cross out every fifth number, and so on, OOr+O1 4 wri jes we ‘The circled numbers are the primes. The “shaped” numbers of Pythagoras led both to modern num- ber theory and to the Pythagoreans’s “atomic,” or “quantum,” con- cept of space. As Philolaus of Croton explained it about 450 .c., they thought of lines, surfaces, and volumes as composed of finite numbers of indivisible units put together like pebbles in a regular pattern Pythagorean numbers constitute one example of such a surface. ‘The fun begins—and so does number theory—when we combine various kinds of numbers. A square number is always the sum of successive gnomons. Hence, there is always a gnomon which can be added to a square number to proxduce another square. ON THE SHAPE OF NUMBERS 19 Any two successive triangular numbers also make a square ve ae And any two equal triangular numbers make an oblong number, cae The word gnomon deserves a fuller explanation. Literally, it means an “indicator,” or “one who knows.” Specifically, it was the name of the sun dial first brought to Greece from Babylonia by Anaximander, who was probably one of Pythagoras teachers The word also meant any vertical object like an obelisk which serves to indicate time by means of its shadow. In geometry, gnomon came to have a more general meaning than the one Py- thagoras gave it; it is now defined as that which must be added to any figure—particulerly a parallelogram—to make a larger figure of similar shape ‘The idea of every number having a particular shape leads to a variety of other ideas. We ean work out quick way to find the sum of all numbers from one to a thousand or a billion. We can find numbers with unexpected properties. We can sce how Pythag- ‘oras probably developed his famous theorem, and we can discover ‘many proofs for it If you start work at a dollar a week and receive a raise of a20° THE NUMBER OF THINGS dollar a week every week thereafter, what will be your total salary for the next ten years? The answer is the 520th triangular number. How do you find the value of the 520th triangular number with- out performing a prodigious feat of addition? You multiply any side of the number (520) by one more than this (521) and divide (520) (521) by two: A triangular number plus itself equals an oblong number. The fifth triangular number, for example, has a side equal to five; two of these triangles placed together make an oblong number with sides of five and six. The area of the oblong is 30. Our required triangle is haf ofthis, or 15S 1+24+34+445—28=15 bp 2D) ona the The formula is 1 +2 + answer to our original problem is (520) (521) or $135,460. ‘The Pythagoreans discovered that six is no ordinary number. Sir is a triangular number, which means it is the sum of suc- cessive numbers: I +2 + 3—6. But itis also an oblong number. which means itis the product of two successive numbers: 2°3— 6, orl 23=6. Consequently, 1:2-3=14+24+3=6 Séx is the only number of which we can say: all the divisors of the number multiplied together are equal to all the divisors added together. ON THE swArE OF NUMSERS 21 Six is also related to the 3: 4: 5 triangle, which is half of a rectangle with an area of 12. Twelve is an oblong number, the sum (of two equal triangular numbers. So the area of a 3: 4 : $ triangle (half that of a 3 4 rectangle) is six. we i] Another odd fact about sir is that a cube with a side of six is the only cube whose surface equals its volume, numerically Finally. consider this curious relationship: G34 G4 =5-5 (333) + (444) + (555) — (666) Pythagoras thought about numbers in a strictly visual way. Square numbers were literally square. Any three numbers multi plied together made a solid number. He would not have said “the square root of nine”; he would have said “the side of a square of nine.” And rather than “two squared (2°, or 22) plus five equals nine,” he simply would have written al He was particularly interested in making squares by adding gnomons to smaller squares. In a single figure he could express a great many facts: I'+ 3 — 2°, for example; or 2 +53"; or 1434547494113 + 15—8:22 THE NUMBER OF THINGS Fiore fo eco rm someting tory wecnh ook magia about equalities like 1+3+5+7+9+ 11+ 13+ 15— They were so surprising and simple that he believed they must re- flect some aspect of the basic design of the universe. His intuition must have appeared naive and very far out at the time. Two thousand years later, however, some of the Pythago- reans’ favorite number series were found to be embedded in various newly discovered natural laws. This particular series, for example, is typical of the successive distances traveled in equal intervals of time by any object moving with constant acceleration A stone or a lead weight dropped from a height will fall about 16 feet during the first second, disregarding air resistance. If the distance it falls during each successive quarter second is carefully measured, the results will be very close to the numbers in the fol lowing table Quarter-second Number of fect ° 1 Is 3 2nd s 3rd > sch 9 sth "1 6th B 7th 1s sch 64 After 2 seconds, it will have fallen a total distance of about 64 fect. Any Pythagorean square number therefore will give a fairly aecurate description of the distance covered by a body falling in 2 vacuum in the vicinity of the earth's surface. ON THE SHAPE OF NUMBERS 23 123456 < Each gnomon is the distance covered during the corresponding quarter of a second: each square is the total distance covered. Dur- ing the fourth quarter-second, the object falls 7 feet (the gnomon ), and its total fall during the first second is 16 feet (the square which includes this gnomon } “So far as I know.” wrote Galileo in 1636, “no one has yet pointed out that the distances traversed during equal time, by a body falling from rest, stand to one another in the same ratio as the odd numbers beginning with unit Pythagoras would have understood why the law of gravitational acceleration was not recognized before the time of Galileo. In the natural world, complications like air resistance hide the existence Of simple underlying relationships. intervals of Pythagoras’s faith in a well ordered universe that could be de- scribed with numbers was not in the least in keeping with the spirit of his times. Mysterious rites and occult beliefs were common, Orphic prophets roamed the by-roads. Many religious sects guar- anteed eternal life to believers, and the orgiastic cult of Dionysus, ‘god of wine, was at the height of its popularity. Pythagoras was a native of the island of Samos in the Aegean Sea near the coast of Asia Minor. The date of his birth is given variously as $90, 586, 584, 582, 572, and 569 w.c. The confusion of dates is not surprising. Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the “father Of history,” was not to be born for another hundred years. Parch ment had not been invented and papyrus was probably rare. Clay cylinders were not very practical; wax tablets were used more or less like interoffice memo pads. Furthermore, the carly Pythago- reans were a very secretive sort, and the details of Pythagoras's22 THE NUMBER OF THINGS Pythagoras felt there was something very special, if not magical, about equalities like 1+ 34547+9+11 +134 15—8% ‘They were so surprising and simple that he believed they must re- flect some aspect of the basic design of the universe. His intuition must have appeared naive and very far out at the time. Two thousand years later, however, some Of the Pythago- reans’ favorite number series were found to be embedded in various newly discovered natural laws. This particular series, for example, is typical of the successive distances traveled in equal intervals of time by any object moving with constant acceleration. A stone or a lead weight dropped from a height will fall about 16 fect during the first second, disregarding air resistance. If the distance it falls during each successive quarter-second is carefully measured, the results will be very close to the numbers in the fol: Towing table Quarter-sccond Number of fect o 1 Ist 3 3 ard 7 4th 9 sth " 6th 3 7th 1s 8th a After 2 seconds, it will have fallen a total distance of about 64 feet. Any Pythagorean square number therefore will give a fairly accurate description of the distance covered by a body falling in a vacuum in the vicinity of the earth's surface ON THE SHAPE OF KUMBcRS 23 123456 a Each gnomon is the distance covered during the corresponding quarter of a second; each square is the total distance covered. Dur- ing the fourth quarter-second, the object falls 7 feet (the gnomon), and its total fall during the first second is 16 feet (the square which includes this gnomon) So far as I know,” wrote Galileo in 1636, “no one has yet pointed out that the distances traversed during equal intervals of time, by a body falling from rest, stand to one another in the same ratio as the odd numbers beginning with unity.” Pythagoras would have understood why the law of gravitational acceleration was not recognized before the time of Galileo. In the natural world, complications like air resistance hide the existence of simple underlying relationships Pythagoras’s faith in a well ordered universe that could be de- scribed with numbers was not in the least in keeping with the spirit of his times. Mysterious rites and occult beliefs were common. Orphic prophets roamed the by-roads. Many religious sects guar- anteed eternal life to believers, and the orgiastic cult of Dionysus. god of wine, was at the height of its popularity. Pythagoras was a native of the island of Samos in the Ac; Sea near the coast of Asia Minor. The date of his birth is given variously as 590, 586, 584, 582, 572, and $69 v.c. The confusion of dates is not surprising. Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the “father Of history,” was not to be born for another hundred years. Parch- ment had not been invented and papyrus was probably rare. Clay cylinders were not very practical; wax tablets were used more or less like interoffice memo pads. Furthermore, the early Pythay reans were a very secretive sort, and the details of Pythagoras’s24 THE NUMBER OF THINGS life were not committed to writing until several centuries after his death, At the age of eighteen, according to one account, he ran away to visit an unele on the island of Lesbos. He later studied in Miletus with Thales and perhaps with Anaximander, an older pupil of Thales. He also studied in Egypt where education was in the hands of jealous priests and therefore most difficult to come by. One ehroni: ler says that Pythagoras presented himself naked at midnight be- fore a temple is an “entrance requirement.” Nothing happened until he finally pounded on the door; then dogs attacked him and slaves on their way to work in the carly dawn jeered at him. A bronze door opened at sunrise, and Pythagoras was shaved, tossed into a cell, and in general given a thorough hazing. ‘Another story claims that he returned to Samos after many years in Egypt and Babylonia but had to pay his first pupil to attend his lectures. In any event, Pythagoras was probably in Miletus or one of the other Ionian cities on or near the mainland of Asia Minor when Cyrus, king of the new Persian Empire, began to exert pressure on the Tonians. The Ionian cities previously had helped Cyrus's wealthy enemy, Croesus, king of Lydia, and Cyrus now exacted heavy tribute from them. Many tonian Greeks migrated to the southern coast of [aly Pythagoras appeared about 530 .c. in the Dorian colony of Croton, a coastal town at the ball of Italy's foot. Here he began teaching in earnest, and some of his pupils eventually founded school, or brotherhiood, which probably went by the name of Temple of the Muses,” or “The Order of the Pytiagoreans.” Like other semireligious sects, the Pythagorean fraternity be- came pretty much a closed corporation with secret initiation rites, strict rules of conduct, and common ownership of goods. Mem bers led a rather monastic life, swore to keep the school’s hasic teachings secret, and refused to eat meat because of the Kinship among all living creatures. They believed that God had built an orderly universe based upon numerical ratios and that numbers could account for the harmonious reality which underlies the con- ON THE SHAPE OF NUMBERS 25 fused appearance of nature. They are said to have worn long hair and pure white garments woven from wool, although Later legends insist they wore nothing but linen, They taught that there were three attributes of the soul: reason, emotion, and intelligence The school concentrated on four mathemata, ot subjects of study: arithmetica (what we would now call the theory of num- bers), harmonica (theory of music), geometria (geometry) and astrologia (astronomy). Pythagoras himself is said to have coined the words marhemarics (a disposition to lean) and philosophy (the love of wisdom) Branches of the school appeared in other cities, but in Croton the natives did not take kindly to the secret rites and “subversive” doctrines of the Pythagoreans. Nor did they appreciate the brother: hood's political alliance with local aristocrats and its attempts at social reform. The final result was a purge, or pethaps a series of purges: ‘The Pythagoreans were driven from town by a mob, Many were lynched, although Pythagoras managed to escape. In Croton, the Pythagoreans were remembered not as mathe- maticians but as filthy vegetarians and superstitious religious prophets who believed that the human soul lives on after death in the body of some animalTHE KNOWING GNOMON 3 Whether or not Pythagoras’s soul lived on is a theological ques- tion, but there is no doubt that his reckoning with squares, gno- mons, and right-angled triangles proved to be immortal. The relationship between squares and the sides of right triangles probably frst occurred to Pythagoras in the following way He noticed that among the first half-dozen gnomons (3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13) there is one which is also a square number. ‘A square plus some particular gnomon equals another square. If this gnomon also happens to be a square number, then we have two squares which equal a third square. If 4° 9—=5?, then eax That nine is both a gnomon and a square leads to an interesting pair of equalities: The significance of 3° —4 + 5 is this: 3° is a square which is equal to the side of a second square (4) plus the side of a third square (5). THE KNOWING GNoMoN 27 Pythagoras knew that every odd square (9, 25, 49, 81, ete.) is also a gnomon simply because it is an odd number. ‘Therefore, he must have reasoned, any odd square—and there are an infinite number of them—can be addled to some even square to make a third square. He produced a series of such squares which begins: = (and 3° = 4 +5) = (F=12 413) (7 = 24 +28) (@=40441) ees (@ab+e) This is the Pythagorean theorem, although it is limited by the qualification that 6 + ¢ must be equal to a Each set of numbers (3, 4, and 5; or 5, 12, and 13, ete.) is known as a Pythagorean triple, and each set gives the lengths of the sides of some right triangle The rule implicit in Pythagoras's series of triples is this: Take any odd number, a, as the short leg of a right tri- angle. The second leg will be * (a? — 1); the hypote- ruse will be % (a* + 1). ‘The second leg will be an even number—in fact it will be what Pythagoras called an “evenly even” number since it is divisible by four. The hypotenuse will be an odd number The theorem today is not limited to triangles whose sides are ‘equal to rational whole numbers. It is commonly stated The square of the hypotenuse (c) of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides (aand b). ZX28) THE NUMBER OF THINGS The Greek philosopher Proclus the Successor says that Py- thagoras sacrificed an ox to the gods in honor of his discovery. Vitruvius makes a similar statement, Plutarch says Pythagoras sacrified a bull “for his famous figure.” Another source claims he sacrificed not one ox but a hundred—a hecatomb of oxen. ‘The numbers that make up various Pythagorean triples do not mean that Pythagoras necessarily thought of the hypotenuse of a 7:24:25 triangle as being five times the length of the hypotenuse of 2 3:4:5 triangle. It was not the absolute measurements that were important but the ratios, the relative lengths of the sides of any ‘one triangle and the triangle’s consequent shape. Here, for example, are the seven whole number right triangles with no sides greater than 50. All are drawn with a common hypotenuse, but within any one triangle the three sides can be measured in the same whole number units. If the hypotenuse of the lowest triangle is divided into 41 equal parts, one side will measure exactly 40 of these parts and the other side exactly nine. Also, there is some whole number of parts into which ail sides of all seven triangles can be evenly divided. It is a large number (the product of 7, 8, 9, 13, 17. 25, 29, 37 and 41) but a perfectly legitimate one. x 4 8. 1S, 5. 12, 12, 35, 7, 24. 40, Real triangles may be of any size and made of almost any mate~ rial, but eventually they will change or disintegrate. The idea of a THE KNOWING GNOMON 29 triangle, however, cannot change; the relationship of 3 to 4 to 5, ‘or of 5 to 12 to 13, will never decay or “die.” This is what the Pythagoreans meant when they said that numbers are “eternal.” Pythagoras, by the way, would not have said, “the square of the hypotenuse.” When he spoke of squares, he meant literal squares. He would have said, “the square on the hypotenuse” or “the square built on the hypotenuse.” ‘The word “hypotenuse” is derived from Aypo (under) and the verb teinein (to stretch). The hypotenuse is the side of a right triangle that stretches out beneath the right angle. Because the Pythagorean theorem joins two separate entities in a single unit, it has traditionally been called “The Theorem of the Bride,” “The Bride’s Chair,” “The Theorem of the Married Woman,” and, in India, “The Chaise of the Little Married Woman.” The Freneh called it the “Pont aucx énes" (Asses' bridge) because it is difficult for fools to master—or, according to another dictionary, because even a fool could understand it. Pythagoras and his immediate followers believed devoutly in whole numbers. They did not deal with fractions; they had no zero in their number system; they thought of the number one as an in divisible unit, The original Pythagorean triples, therefore, were meant to identify only those right triangles whose sides could be reckoned in ordinary whole oumbers. It is as if Pythagoras had laid out the sides of his triangles with wooden matches and had re- fused to consider any triangle in which the matches did not fit exactl There are other tripe, such as 8, 15,17, n which he square of the short side does not equal the sum of the other two sides, ‘These triples can be explained by the same principle if we accept the un-Pythagorean notion of a “multiple” gnomon, an L-shaped column with dots lined up two or more abreast rather than in single file A square composed of 225 dots (15*) plus a double gnomon of 64 dots equals a square of 289 (17*). Sixty-four (8?) does not equal the sum of 15 and 17; but it does equal (15 + 17) times two, and two is the difference between 15 and 1730° rue NuMeER oF THINGS We can now write a simple formula that will apply to all right triangles with sides measured in whole numbers. a= (e— be +b) For example ¢ b « square dasa gnomon a be e 5) (b+0) 304 5 So= 1 - ues) don hg 5 16 = 2-345) Sade 1g B=, 1 (2413) 6 8 10 % = 2 7 m4 25 ee nae, 8 15 17 64 = 2 -ds5 9 40 41 sk = 1 + ota 10 24 26 100 = 2 - (24426) 20 21 29 400 = & -@1429) 33044-55089, = 1s 4 4 55) 33 56 65 = 1089 = 99 - (56 4.65) 33 180 1831089 = 3 ARO + 183), 33 Sad S45 1099 = 1 (544 4 S45) ee H Ei etl al wake fod oles of ce lenis cee Real ee malo Eris cayocion ts an c+ baie 2s lbs sicatioe items of Syeagote? equa webct They os ths fae ac ont ofa pee Tan a ol Ge Sonica part he fom den sad fie sg of Se verte part b bs Thelen, 0-5 6 We Ti age othe yaomen wica the Ivo pasls ae beth a er S08 ad c— fie percent wits tin oe Pyibagectn ins rap er ln rngeriiuner pe er a ar to one, ee oe Pena HI | eb Both of the above figures can be represented by the single geo- metrical drawing below. The triangle constructed on the top side of the large square is a right-angled triangle with the dimensions a=3;b=4; and e=5.320 THE NUMBER OF THINGS The larg square (c*) consists of a smaller square (b*) plus a 2 total area of e(e — b) + b(e—b), which is the same as (c+ b)(c—b), or & — In a right triangle—and only in a right triangle—the area of a square (a) built on side @ of the triangle is equal to the area of the gnomon (c* — 6°). Another theorem of Pythagoras states: eight triangular numbers plus one equals a square number. The logic of this statement is clear in the case of the triangular ‘number six : Be le oer This diagram immediately suggests the figure drawn by the Hindu mather Bhiskara about 1150 4.0. Bhaskara’s only The large square (c*) consists of a small square plus four tri- angles. Each triangle has a base equal to b, an altitude equal to a, and an area equal to sab. Each side of the small central square is equal to b—a; and (b— a) times (b — a) is * — 2 ab + a Therefore: C= 4 (Mab) + (b 2ab +(e —2 =P +e THE KNOWING GNOMON 33 Pythagoras’s diagram also suggests a more familiar proof One square (c) plus four triangles (shaded) is equal to two smaller squares plus the same four triangles; therefore, the one square must be equal to the other two combined. The second figure can be arranged more artistically by turni two of the triangles upside down, Another demonstration based on the same idea is said to have been discovered by Leonardo da Vinci. It uses two triangles in- stead of four and inverts one of them. a bh The two figures above are equal in area. The figure on the left ists of two triangles plus the square built on the hypotenuse of either one. The second figure consists of the same two triangles plus the squares built on the shorter sides of either triangle.34° THE NUMBER OF THINGS To show that the two figures are indeed equal, each one is divided in half, corner to corner. If section D is then turned upside down and end for end, the two figures will be identical. 4, B, and C are identical halves to begin with. C and D are mirror images of another OG A formal proof of the Pythagorean theorem can be worked out by combining these two figures so that they share one of the tri- angles in common. FILLING SPACE 4 Triangular numbers and square numbers demonstrate two ob- vious ways in which a flat surface can be covered with identical units in a “harmonium,” or perfectly orderly array; every dot is an equal distance from each of its closest neighbors. The int suing question that occurred to the Pyth: eans was: how can a sphere be covered with dots so that every one is equi- distant from its neighbors? They answered the question only after a good deal of serious play with polygons. The Pythagorean custom of picturing a number as a regular pat tern of dots led naturally to making patterns out of patterns. What kind of identical shapes can be packed together in a perfectly har- monious way? Obviously, identical square tiles or id can be lined up so that they will complete ical equilateral triangles cover a floor DENSA os360 THE NUMBER OF THINGS What other shapes will pack together in a similar manner? ‘The Pythagoreans had pentagonal, hexagonal, and heptagonal numbers as well as triangular and square numbers, and they knew how to construct many regular polygons—polygons with all sides and all angles equal. They knew that identical hexagonal tiles will completely cover an area—as can be seen in a honeycomb or in six-sided columns of basalt like those of the Devil's Postpile in California What eke? The answer is that no other regular polygon will work The number of angular degrees surrounding a point is 360; and 360 is a simple multiple of the angle between adjoining sides of an equilateral triangle (60°) or of a square (90°) or of a regular hexagon (120°). No other regular polygon has an interior angle that will divide evenly into 360°. The angles ot a pentagon are too small; the angles of any regular polygon with more than are too large. ‘The next question is: can any of these three regular plane fig FiLuinG space 37 uures—triangle, square, and hexagon—be fitted together in three dimensions to form 2 regular solid? It was no secret that six squares can form a cube, and the Egyp- tians before Pythagoras were familiar with two regular solids made with equilateral triangles ‘The Pythagoreans probably started from scratch, however, in their attempt to construct as many regular solids as possible, ‘Any solid with flat faces must have a certain number of edges and comets, or vertexes; a regular solid must have all its faces, edges and vertexes, exactly alike ‘At least three faces must come together at a point to form a vertex. The Pythagoreans already knew that three regular polygons cannot meet at a point if they have more than six sides; they also knew that three hexagons meeting at a point will lie perfectly flat and cannot be bent upward to form the vertex of a solid igure. Therefore, the faces of a regular solid must be equilateral tri angles, squares, or regular pentagons Four squares meeting at the same point also lie fat, but if one is removed the other three can be folded or tilted upward to form one corner of a cube Likewise, six equilateral triangles meeting at @ point must lie flat, but five can be folded upward to make the angle of a regular solid, So can four, and so can three.38 0ommHe “The one remaining possiblity is to fit three regular pentagons together to form a solid angle. umser of THINGS Thus we have five and only five regular solids: Edges Vertexes Faces Tetrahedron 6 4 4 triangles Octahedron 12 6 8 triangles Cube 2 8 6 squares Tcosahedron 30 12 20 triangles Dedecahedron 30 20 12 pentagons VY risuime space 39 ‘The structure of these five solids answers the question about spacing dots evenly on the surface of a sphere. There can be 4. 6, 8, 12, or 20 dots, and they will be the vertexes of a regular poly- hedron inscribed within the sphere. The five solids also show how the surface of a sphere may be completely covered with identical surface shapes—spherical tri angles, squares, or pentagons. They are formed by connecting the vertexes of a regular inscribed polyhedron by Fines drawn on the surface of the sphere, each line being an are of a “great circle.” or “equator.” In cach of the five regular solids, the number of vertexes and faces is two more than the number of edges, an observation proved by Leonhard Euler in the eighteenth century. The octahedron and the cube (also known as a hexahedron) are ‘closely related. Each has the same number of edges, and the num- ber of vertexes of one equals the number of faces of the other. Either one, therefore, will fit neatly inside the other, vertex to face, face to vertex, and edge to edge. = The icosahedron and dodecahedron form a similar pair. 640 THE NUMBER OF THINGS The only mate for a tetrahedron is another tetrahedron: how- ever, a tetrahedron will fit inside a cube, sharing half of the cube’s comers, of into an octahedron, “cornering” on half of the octa- hedron’s faces. VAS The Pythagoreans identified the first four regular solids wit the four elements: tetrahedron with fire, octahedron with air, cube with earth, and icosahedron with water. ‘Some historians say that Pythagoras discovered the icosahedron and the dodecahedron. It seems more likely that the icosahedron was known to the Babylonians and perhaps to the Egyptians be fore Pythagoras. The construction of the dodecahedron is often attributed to Theaetetus, a great mathematician who was a friend of Plato. Euclid claimed that Theaetetus discovered both figures. Other sources report that the dodecahedron, the “sphere with the 12 pentagons,” was constructed by Hippasus of Metapontum, the unfortunate Pythagorean whose public revelation of the brother- hood's secrets was said to have caused his death in a shipwreck. ‘Opposed to ali these claims is the fact that an Etruscan dodeca- hedron made of soapstone has been found near Padua and is be- lieved to date from before 500 8.c At any rate, the Pythagoreans apparently discovered the dodeca- hedron for themselves after the other four figures had been identi- fied with the four elements. The dodecahedron was associated with the celestial sphere by Aristotle. The study of the five “perfect bodies” led the Pythagoreans to recognize that each successive solid accounted for more points on the surface of a sphere and that each was therefore more similar to riuuine srace 41 1a sphere; for a sphere is really an “infinibedron,” a polyhedron ‘with an infinite number of sides. The sphere thus assumed a truly cosmic importance to them. Also, Pythagoras is said to have shown that a circle contains the greatest area of any figure with the same perimeter and that a sphere contains the greatest volume of any solid with the same sur- face area. So the sphere, simplest of all solids, became also the most “perfect.” The peculiar fact about the seemingly mystical doctrines of the Pythagoreans is that these doctrines were at the same time often logical, ingenious, and remarkably perceptive. If a sphere is simple and perfect in the Pythagorean sense, then it is likely to occur in nature, and does. Non-solid bodies—human cells or falling rain- drops, bubbles or stars or molten proto-plancts—tend to assume ‘2 volume with the Ieast possible surface, or with a surface every- where equidistant from the center, namely, a sphere. The intuition of Pythagoras and his immediate followers. was, hardly what we today would call strictly scientific, but it formed both the motivation and the factual foundation for the more exact and more sophisticated science of the later Pythagorean. All of them, early and late. had what amounted to a religious faith in the power of numbers, and they were laughed at for claim- ing that “all things are number.” itis hardly surprising that the Pythagoreans developed an abid- ing reverence for whole numbers. Whole numbers held the key t0 natural secrets and universal harmonies. They explained the struc ture of squares and the magic of the right-angled triangle. Single, perfectly regular units accounted for the existence of the five regular solids and for shapes that can completely cover an area. ‘Anything less than a whole unit was fragmentary and unthinkable. Because of the Pythagoreans’ reverence for whole numbers, one of their most characteristic scientific principles came to be their conviction that natural phenomena are not continuous but are made of discrete individual units or steps. Things may appear to be smooth and flowing. but really they are not42 THE NUMBER OF THINGS ‘This is what we might call a “quantum” concept of the universe, and for this belief the Pythagoreans were ignored or ridiculed throughout most of recorded history. ‘The quantum idea was largely intuitive with the Pythagoreuns. Their reasoning was often poor; their claims could not be proved or disproved. Yet today scientists find that they must use whole numbers to describe events as various as the firing of a nerve cell, the emission and absorption of light, the electric charge on an atom, the mutation of a human cell, the architecture of « crystal, and the relative number of sodium and chlorine atoms in table salt None of these facts would have greatly surprised the Pythago- reans, who had some remarkably advanced thoughts on a variety of subjects. Consider, for example, the following historical faets and what they may have in common: About the year 1490, Christopher Columbus had a difficult time convincing people that the earth was round. ‘A few years later Nicholas Copernicus made enemies by claiming that the sun, and not the earth, was the cen- ter of the universe, Early in the nineteenth century, chemist John Dalton had the notion that everything must be made of very small single particles—atoms, Only one hundred years ago many people still believed that fossils Were the result of a mysterious “fossil-making force” in rocks or that they grew from seeds. And a short while later Charles Darwin was ridiculed and condemned for suggesting that man had evolved from some more primitive form of lite. What these facts have in common is not that the revolutionary ideas were totally new, but rather that they were a good two thou- sand years old. All of them had been announced or suggested by fone or another of the Pythagoreans two hundred and fifty to five hundred years before Christ Most Pythagorean statements about scientific matters were naive and totally unproved. Yet these men were somehow on the right FILLING space 43 track in an age when natural phenomena were traditionally attrib: uted to nothing more than the whim of a pleased or an angry god. Pythagoras and Anaximander taught that the earth was freely suspended in space, “poised aloft, supported by nothing.” A generation later Parmenides announced that the earth was not a ise or eylinder, as Anaximander had imagined, but a sphere, In 250 n.c., Eratosthenes measured the shadow of an obelisk in Alexandria on a late June noon when he knew that sun in Syene, 575 miles to the south, was directly overhead, He thus estimated the earth's circumference as 250,000 stadia, or roughly 28,750 miles, which is within 16 per cent of the correct figure. ‘Aristarchus of Samos meanwhile was teaching that the plan revolved about a central fire called Hestia, the hearth of the uni- verse. The Pythagoreans in general would have been dismayed had they known that almost everyone on earth in the fifteenth century A.D. would be convinced that the earth was flat. Before 400 8.., Leucippus of Miletus and his pupil, Democritus of Abdera, declared that there are “indivisible bodies.” all of the same nature but infinite in number and in varicty of shape, “of which everything else is composed.” Nothing exists, said Demoeri- tus, except atoms and the void between them; atoms are eternal and they are so small that their size cannot be diminished. The word “stom” means indivisible and is derived from a (not) and tomes (to cut). Democritus further anticipated modern chemistry by explaining that the apparent difference between, say. rocks and trees, is caused by the way our senses react to different coniigura- tions and combinations and motions of the atoms. He even formu lated a naive Jaw of conservation of mass with his dictum, “Noth- ing ean arise from nothing or be reduced to nothing.” ‘Anaximander believed water to be the original element from which all else was derived. This incorrect speculation nevertheless Ted him to explain the origin of fossils by the assumption that the ‘world must once have been covered by water, He also concluded that all life must have arisen from the sea as the water evaporated in the sun and that the aneestors of man must have once looked like fish, ‘The atoms of Democritus and the evolutionary hints of Anaxi-44 THE NUMBER OF THINGS mander were mete philosophical guesses, and they cannot be com- pared with the atom and evolution as we understand the terms today. But we can hardly dismiss their prophetic nature as no more than a lucky guess The insights of Pythagoras, Anaximander, Aristarchus, and Democritus were all specific results of something more important: the Pythagoreans’ continuing search for simple, basic laws of na: ture which they firmly believed would explain the seeming confu: sion of the natural world. They taught that everything in nature hhas its own special harmony or rhythm or structure based on simple relationships among whole numbers. Theirs was a very new and unpopular way of viewing the world and it remained unpopular until the time of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton some twenty centuries later. Even then Galileo's oppo- nents denounced him for his “Pythagorean doctrines.” Since Newton's time, a distinetly Pythagorean kind of order has been discovered in nature again and again Microscopic sea animals called radiolarians assume many shapes, including those of octahedrons, icosahedrons, and dodecahedrons The submicroscopie Tipula iridescent virus is an icosahedron Polio virus has a shape that may be described as either an icosa hedron or @ dodecahedron since the sixty balls of protein that cover its surface are arranged in twenty triangular clusters and at the same time in twelve pentagonal clusters FILLING Space 45 Gas hydrates are chemical combinations in whieh five water ‘molecules are linked in the form of a pentagon and twelve of these pentagons are joined to form a dodecahedron, Because dodeca- hhedrons will not pack together snugly so as to completely fill a , there are cavities between them into which are fited molecules of gas, Perfect natural crystals of alum are octahedral, Sodium bromate crystallizes in the shape of a tetrahedron. Salt crystallizes as a cube with each sodium ion surrounded by six chlorine ions and each chlorine ion surrounded by six sodium ions—in the form of an octahedron. Alum, sodium bromate, and salt erystals are related to one an- other because of the numerical relationship existing between cubes, cetahedrons, and tetrahedrons. An octahedron is identified by the numbers 12, 6, and 8, which refer to the number of its edges, ver- texes, and faces. A cube is very similar: 12, 8, and 6, A tetrahedron hhas just half as many edges and vertexes as a cube. Because of this ‘numerical relationship, an octahedral crystal can grow (by ex- tending every other face) into a tetrahedron All three solids fit one another and therefore all belong to the same erystal system. Crystals do not just happen to come in these and other particular shapes. All erystals are forever limited to only those shapes which can be formed by an integral number of atoms in a regular array. In 1782 Abbé René Just Haily discovered that the regular ‘angles made by the sides of 2 crystal could be explained if he imag- ined a crystal to be made of smvall units spaced at regular intervals460 rue NUMBER OF THINGS —an ingenious explanation and one reminiscent of the invisible atoms and voids of Democritus. Eventually, crystals were found to be made of atoms arranged in a “lattice,” a three-dimensional version of trees in an orange grove or the dots in the polygonal numbers of Pythagoras. The face of a crystal can cut off only whole numbers of atoms. and lengths of a crystal’s several faces are necessarily related as whole numbers are related, usually in simple ratios. Only certain angles ccan exist between these faces; other angles are impossible, just as a Pythagorean square number cannot be cut smoothly at a 20° angle without slicing up some of the dots. Crystal faces are the external ‘expression of a definite internal structure. In other words, the natural arrangement of atoms in a mineral is Pythagorean, and the geometry of crystals is uniquely the geom- etry of Pythagoras, a geometry of whole numbers, a geometry of identical units and discontinuous gaps arranged in regular patterns. Just as pentagons cannot fill an area, no crystal can have an axis of fivefold symmetry; only 2, 3., 4, and 6-fold axes are possible. Pythagoras's geometry of points led—eventually, but directly — to the theory of discontinuous groups, a theory which correctly predicted that the symmetry clements of crystals can be grouped in no more than thirty-two different ways. ‘The difference between a geometry of continuous lines and a Pythagorean geometry of points is evident in this simple problem: If eggs cost five cents apiece, how would you draw a graph to show the cost of any number of eggs up to half a dozen? The usual answer is: Cost 30 20: 10. Number of eggs FILLING space 47 - Which is misleading because it implies that we can buy, for example, 1.414213... eggs for five times the square root of two cents. The Pythagorean graph would be a series of distinct points: To draw a continuous line in such a case would be pointless. ‘The most surprising verification of Pythagoras’s theory that na- ture can be explained in terms of whole number ratios occurs in the history of chemistry. Johann Dibereiner in 1829 discovered several triads of chemi- cal elements that seemed to be related by numbers. In one triad the atomic weight of sodium (22.99) was midway between the tomic weights of lithium (6.94) and potassium (39.10). The three elements have similar chemical properties, and those of the middle one, sodium, lie midway between those of the other two. In 1862 A. E. B. de Chancourtois suggested that properties of elements were related just as whole numbers are related. Two years later J. A. R. Newlands found that when he listed a number ff elements in order of their atomic weights, similar properties recurred at every seventh element just as the same notes of the scale recur at every seventh white key on a piano. Newlands called this regularity the “law of octaves.” In 1869 Dmitri Mendeleev and Lothar Meyer related most of the known elements to one another in terms of their relative atomic weights; they showed that certain properties are found to recur pe- riodically when the elements are listed in order. Finally, in 1914, Henry Moseley proved that all the known ele- ments form a perfectly regular series when listed according to the number of positive electric charges on each element's atomic nu-48° THE NUMBER OF THINGS cleus. Today each clement is represented by a whole number. the integers ranging without a break from one for hydrogen to 103 for Lawrencium, ‘Any neutral atom must also have the same number of negative ‘charges (electrons) as it has positive charges (protons). As a result of this integral relationship, two or more elements can combine chemically with one another in simple whole number ratios and in tno other way. There is always an equal number of sodium and chlorine atoms in table salt, and there are two hydrogen atoms for every oxygen atom in water. Consequently, chemical formulae can indicate immediately the number of constituent atoms in each mole- cule of any compound. H.O means two hydrogens and one oxygen per molecule of water; CH, means one carbon and four hydrogens in every molecule of methane. Even biology and evolution can be reduced ultimately to bio- chemistry, which again is based upon the integral nature of atoms. The unique characteristics of every living thing are determined by a particular number of genes in the creature's cells. Each gene is controlled by a particular whole number of nucleic acid molecules, and each of these molecules is made of a specific number of atoms strung out in a rigidly specific pattern. The list of natural processes that depend upon whole number relationships is becoming endless. Water can only evaporate mole- cule by molecule; electrons can only vibrate in specific orbits about the nucleus of an atom: the rings of Saturn can only occur at particular distances from the planet; and the spin of an electron or the emission of light by a molecule must be reckoned, like the price of eges, in terms of indivisible units, or quanta. ‘The laws that describe the behavior of atoms and genes, elec tons and enzymes, photons and growing crystals are usually laws that deal with whole numbers and the formation of limited patterns. None of these laws is obvious, and it took thousands of in- i tors many centuries to pin them down, As De- mocritus said, “Truth is at the bottom of a pit.” DARK SECRETS AND THE 5 GOLDEN SECTION There was one drawback to the Pythagorean theory of a whole number universe, and it was a big one. Pythagoras, or some later le, made one important dis- covery that he did not want to make. He found a number that did not exist in his number system and that could not even be written down Quite possibly he was forced to discover it because it confronted him daily in the mosaic patterns of floors and walls and prome- nades. 4 NANAN-N ‘This nameless and “numberless” number was, in fact, a key to Pythagoras’s favorite figure. the square: it was the length of the diagonal of a square with an area of one and the side of a square with an area of rwo. A square of one has a side of one. A square of four has a side of two, But how long is the side of a square with an area of two? [cis equal to the square root of swo—\2—simple to draw yet impossible to measure accurately. ‘The square root of two has a definite length, and yet there is no number with which to describe it. It cannot be written as a decimal: ‘we use the approximate decimal 1.4142... but the true value ‘would be a decimal that never ended and never repeated. It cannot be written as a fraction for there is no fraction exactly50 THE NUMBER OF THINGS equal to the square root of 1wo. This means it cannot be expressed 8 @ ratio, and therefore we call it an irvatio-nal number, ‘The original Greek word for “irrational” was alogos, which car- ries the implication of a “non-word,” unutterable, unspeakable, unreasonable, and unreckonable. The square root of rivo is literally unutterable as an ordinary number. It was also “unspeakable” to the Pythagoreans because it challenged the adequacy of their geometry and the very structure of their scientific philosophy. How could nature be described in terms of simple relationships among whole numbers when something as ‘common as the diagonal of a square could not? ‘The knowledge that irrational numbers existed was 2 dark and dangerous secret, According to popular legend, at least one Py- thagorean, Hippasus, died because he revealed this secret to the world, The legend expresses an attitude reminiscent of the Egyp- tian priest Ahmes, who a thousand years earlier had entitled a series of arithmetic problems: “Directions for Knowing All Dark Things.” The discovery of irrational numbers was inevitable, however, for anyone who worried enough about right-angled triangles. What the Pythagorean theorem does is to relate three one-dimensional lengttis to one another by way of an additional dimension. You cannot change a two-dimensional quantity (an area) back into one- dimensional terms without running into square roots, curved graph lines, and irrational numbers. ‘The Pythagoreans still cannot lay full claim to the square root of two. It turns out that the Babylonians knew about the square root of two more than a thousand years before Pythagoras was born An old cuneiform text bears the following information: =e ts DARK SECRETS AND THE GOLDEN seeTION SI ‘The numbers are written in sexagesimal notation. Each figure represents a successive power of 60, just as, in our decimal system, each figure would represent a power of 10. ‘The number (1; 24; 51; 10) is equal to, Gad St ceato 60 ~ 3600 * 216000 + Of, in decimals, 1.414213 Its a very close approximation to the square root of wo. Thirty times (1; 24; 51; 10) is equal to the sexagesimal num. ber (42; 25: 35). This is a remarkable achievement for Babylonian or Sumerian mathematics, but it does imply that the Babylonians were quite satisfied with a good approximation, They solved a specific prac- tical problem and thus overlooked the profound implications of irrational numbers. The Pythagoreans, on the other hand, were deeply disturbed because they could find no way of expressing an exact value. For one thing, ‘wo is not a square number, and two dots cannot be drawn in the form of a square as ean four dots or nine. For another thing, you may cut a 2-foot line into any number ‘of equal segments—thirds, eighths, nineteenth, millionths, what- ever; but no cut will ever occur at a point which is the square root ‘of two feet from either end. Not even it you slice the line into an infinite number of equal pieces, So the recognition of irrational numbers brought with it the unsettling idea of infinity. There are, for example, an infinite num- ber of lines less than 1 foot long that can be expressed in ordinary fractions: » ete. But in addition there are also an infinite number of perfectly real Jengths that can never be written as rational fractions: 1/2, V2/V3. V3/V%, VANS. V2/2, V2/3, V2/4, cto Even more disturbing was the realization that whole number Pythagorean triples cannot account for all possible right triangles There are an infinite number of rational right-angled triangles; yet between any two of them there is always a place for a right triangle with one or more irrational sides.52 THE NUMBER OF THINGS ‘The later Pythagoreans became more at home with irrationals, but a century after Pythagoras, Philolaus still taught that falsehood and envy belong to the nature of the Unlimit, the Unintelligent, and the Irrational, Infinity was “the Dark of Unlimit.” Nevertheless the Pythagorcans made use of their dark secret, for the irrational was embodied in their distinctive badge, the pentaele or star pentagram ¥ A pentagon can be made by tying a ribbon or a narrow strip of paper in a loose knot and flattening the knot. A pentacle is made either by extending the sides of the pentagon or by connecting the five corners with straight lines. DARK SECRETS AND THE GOLDEN SECTION 53 There is, incidentally, a puzzle which asks: how ean you plant ten cabbages in five rows of four cabbages each? The answer is to plant them at the intersections of all lines in a pentacle. ‘The pentacle has a long history as a magic symbol. The Baby- Tonians used it before Pythagoras. Faust banned Mephistopheles ‘with it, It is still known in Europe as a Drudenjuss, a witch's foot To the Pythagoreans, however, it meant well-being, complete- ness, and health. They sometimes drew the figure with letters that spelled dyieu (aygieia), which means “health.” ‘The principal magic, as far as the Pythagoreans were concerned, in the fact that each of the five lines in a pentacle divides two54 THe NUMBER OF THINGS other lines into what is called a “golden section.” The ratio of the shorter segment (e) 10 the longer segment (J) equals the ratio of the longer segment (f) to the entire line (e + f) F is called the “golden mean” between the short segment of the line and the whole line To the Pythagoreans, the golden mean was the way of wisdom between extremes. To Johannes Kepler it was the symbol of crea: tion or generation. To many generations of artists and architects, a rectangle with the dimensions e and f (or f and e + f) was a fun- damental aesthetic proportion Three such rectangles, identical in size and intersecting one an other at right angles, may be placed within a regular icosahedron or dodecahedron. The twelve comers of these three “golden rectan- sles” will mark the twelve vertexes of the icosahedron oF the cen- ters of the twelve faces of the dodecahedron. the golden mean also turns up now and then in an odd theory which states: a woman's navel divides her in a golden section. Several _men claim to have demonstrated that, if an average ‘woman's height is given as e + f, then the distance from navel to hairline is ¢ and the height of her navel is f ‘The correctness of the ratio © paring two similar triangles. DARK SECRETS AMD THE GOLDEN SECTION 55 In the diagram, e’ =e and f =f. Comparing two sides of the smaller triangle with two sides of the larger triangle, we have Another way of expressing the ratio is Foeeth which means that the square of the longer segment is equal in area to-a rectangle formed by the shorter segment and the entire line. Between the square and the rectangle lies a triangle of peculiar interest. The base is equal to f and each side is equal to ¢ + f. Both56 THE NUMBER OF THINGS ‘base angles are equal and the third angle (which is one point of a star pentagram) is half the size of either base angle. ‘The triangle can be divided into two isosceles triangles, one of which is similar to it. RA By comparing the base and one side of each of the two similar triangles, it is easy to see. again, that ¢ is to fas fistoe +f. The broad-based triangle with sides f. j. and ¢ +f is. in the general sense of the word, a gnomon. It is what must be added to the small triangle to make a similar but larger figure. ‘A similar gnomon can be cut from the small triangle, and Progress The short side of one triangle becomes a long side of the next, DARK SECRETS AND THE G EN section 57 and these sides form a continuing proportion. Any solid linc seg- ‘ment in the follwing figure is the geometric mean—and the golden mean—hetween the Tines on either side. 2 j= The golden mean also turns up in rather unexpected places. The seeds of the pine tree and other conifers are arranged in such a way that they spiral around a cone. Spirals can be seen winding upward in both clockwise and counter-clockwise directions. (On most cones, three rows of seeds form shallow spirals wind- ing upward in one direction—say, counter-clockwise. These three spirals account for all the seeds on the cone. ‘But the seeds, at the same time, are also lined up in five rows that spiral clockwise and more steeply. (On this highly simplified version of a pine cone, other spirals can be seen—a pair of clockwise spirals and a single shallow spiral running counterclockwise. a 1 _e+t ef e+i e+%58 THE NUMOCR OF THINGS On real cones, which are tapered and much fatter, eight and often thirteen steep spirals can be counted as well. ‘The eye of a daisy is composed of many tiny florets arranged in curved rows that spiral out from the center. There are often thir- teen spirals in one direction and twenty-one in the other. or per- haps twenty-one and thirty-four. Similar spirals can be seen clearly in the face of a sunflower—usually thirty-four and fifty-five in num- ber, or fifty-five and eighty-nine, These particular numbers appear again and again in the ar- rangement of the seeds, florets, or buds of plants. Comparing the number of clockwise and counterclockwise spirals, pair by pair, we find this seri sis 13:21 au 34:55 55:89 Each ratio is an approximation, in whole numbers, 10 the ra between ¢ and j, the two parts of a golden section. The more com- plex the ratio, the more nearly accurate it is. A sunflower comes closer to the golden mean than does a fir cone. This strange coincidence may appear somewhat less accidental if we consider two related facts: the geometry of regularly spaced Units and the nature of irrational relationships. I we slice our simplified pine cone down the back, peel off the surface, and spread it flat, all the spirals appear as straight lines. The seeds form rows in various directions just as the trunks of fruit trees do in an orchard. K SECRETS AND THE GOLDEN SECTION 59 A single, almost horizontal row of seeds runs up and left from the lower right hand corner. Another single row slants up to the right, ‘Next come two steeper rows to the left, three to the right, and five to the left, We can also see one or two of the seeds in each of eight nearly vertical rows ‘Other numbers in the series (13, 21, 34, ete.) can be found in similar but more complex patterns Because the relationship of the wo pants (e and f) of a golden section is irrational, no whole number of fs can be equal to a whole number of e's For example, a line can be divided into segments each equal to the length f, and also into equal segments of length e. No point above the line will ever coincide with a point below the line, even if we continue the succession of f's and e's forever. Gani 62 lar sf a (ee ¢ Rie Se Be Ve However, we can certainly find an approximate ratio in terms of whole numbers Notice that the point which marks the length of the first f is relatively close to the point which marks the length of two e’s. Of course, 2f and 3e are still closer to one another; 3f and Se are closer yet. We have to go to 5f and 8e before we find better match, and then to 8f and Ie, We now have the following series of ratios or fractions: 12 4 3 2 333 3 & If we continued the diagram and noted every point at which some number of fs and some number of e’s correspond more closely than at any previous point, we could add to the list. Le te aes 1 2] 34 3 89 «(iad 2a”60 THE NUMBER OF THINGS Each numerator in the series is the same as the previous de~ nominator. Any numerator is the sum of the two previous numera- tors; any denominator is the sum of the two previous denominators. Each new ratio is closer to the actual value of . The fraction 144 equals 0.61802: Faq oHas 0.618 ++ it is an approximation correct to five decimal paces. The exact value of cam never be reached because it cannot be expressed as a ratio between whole numbers V5 When f is equal to one, the actual value of ¢ is}? | or approximately 0.61803. Using this approximation, the equation zie sf Aa e0sia weet fg hey cam be writen OS The series of numbers that led us closer and closer to the propor tion of the golden section actually begins We could begin with any two numbers (adding them to obtain the third number ‘and construct a. related series. This series also would converge on the proportion of the golden section. x! 50 on How much Pythagoras himself knew about square roots is a mat: ter for conjecture. Some historians credit him with discovering the itrationality of the square root of two; others credit Hippasus, about a generation later. At any rate, by 400 8.c. a Pythagorean named Theodorus of Cyrene had “discovered” all the irrational square roots from the square root of ro to the square root of 17. There, according to Plato, “for some reason he stopped. ‘The easiest way of visualizing the relative lengths of these square roots is to construct a series of right triangles each of which has a short side of one DARK SECRETS AND THE GOLDEN SrcTION 61 Each new side is derived from the previous side by the Py. thagorean theorem. For example, (\14)® +1° = (15) The first three sides—\ I, \2, \ 3—are of particular interest because they are, respectively, the side, the surface diagonal, and the interior diagonal of a unit cube. Why did Theodorus stop short of the square root of 172 Plutarch said the Pythagoreans “have a horror for the number 17” because it lies between two somewhat magical numbers: 16, which is a Square with an area equal to its perimeter, and 18, which is the double of a square and is also a rectangle (3 x 6) with an area cequal to its perimete62 rue num Certainly, irrational numbers were not understood during Py- thagoras’s lifetime as clearly as they were during the century fol- lowing his death, the fifth century. 8.c. This was the century of Pericles and of the great tragic poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. It was the golden age of Greek culture, an age of rationalism and enlightenment in which the Sophists questioned the existence of “absolute” truths and values. It was also the age in which the Pythagorean tradition ma- tured with the teachings of men like Leucippus. Democritus, and Archytas. pe ceees og i ee el seny eet Reet aeat often spoken of merely as Him. He was known as a performer of miracles and his most devoted followers considered him divine. The ‘most startling tale is that of a brook which arose from its streambed to declaim, “Hail Pythagoras!” Whether or not Pythagoras personally is responsible for all the mathematical discoveries attributed to him is difficult to judge and usually impossible to prove. Many of his biographers were by a mild form of hero worship, and many accomplishments of later Pythagoreans were undoubtedly credited to the master. It is also difficult to know at times just who was and who was not a “Pythag- orean.” In the years following Pythagoras's death, his influence obviously became more general and more diffuse. And there is often considerable overlapping of Pythagorean theory and Greek science in general. In the fourth century B.c., Pythagoras and his school were honored by more than legend. Plato incorporated a great deal of Pythagorean theory in his works. In particular, he taught that re- ality consists not of material things but of perfect ideas—a revised form of the Pythagorean doctrine that reality is based on number. About 300 a.c., Euclid relied heavily upon Pythagorean number theory and geometry when writing his famous Elements. ‘The Pythagorean tradition was still followed in the third century 8... by Apollonius, Bratosthenes, and Aristarchus of Samos, ai- though their accomplishments were overshadowed by the work of the great Archimedes. The Pythagorean school died out after this time although it was R oF THINGS DARK SECRETS AND THE GOLDEN secrion 68 revived briefly about 100 a.n. by Nicomachus of Gerassa and other socalled “neo-Pythagoreans.” ‘Nichomachus is known for his interest in the theory of numbers in general and for “perfect numbers” in particular. A perfect num- ber—sometimes called a “Nicomachus number’—is a number Which is equal to the sum of its divisors, oF factors. The first perfect ‘number is six and the second is 28. The divisors of six are 1. 2. and 3, and their sum is six; the divisors of 28 are 1. 2, 4, 7, and 14, and their sum is 28. Nicomachus probably knew two other perfect numbers also: 496 and 8,128. An odd relative of a perfect number is a pair of “friendly,” or “amicable,” numbers. The divisors of one member of the pair add up to the other member and vice versa. Pythagoras is said to have defined a friend as: a second “I,” like 220 and 284, The divisors of 284 (1, 2, 4. 71. and 142) add up to 220. The divisors of 220 (1. 2, 4, 5. 10, 11, 20, 22. 44, 55, and 110) add up to 284, The second pair of amicable numbers—17, 296 and 18.416— was found 2,100 years after Pythagoras by Pierre de FermatFLY’S-EYE VIEW 6 Why does the Pythagorean theorem work? This is a question approached by two flies, Baker and Able, when they found themselves stuck on separate pieces of flypaper on a desk top. Nearby, lying face up, was an old watch. It was running, but it lacked both a crystal and an hour hand. Tiring of their gluey struggle, Baker and Able soon got into an ‘argument about the length of the minute hand on the watch. Able said it was short but getting longer. Baker said it was long but getting shorter and shorter. ‘After some 15 minutes Able admitted he must have been wrong: the minute hand was indced getting shorter. But Baker changed his mind at the same time. To settle the argument, each kept a record... and for a very short while, at 7 minutes and 30 seconds past noon, they came to a brief agreement. OF course each fly could only see the watch edge-on. But both knew the watch to be 2 inches in diameter, so they were able to judge the length of the minute hand with considerable accuracy. Their joint report on the length of the minute hand, in inches, follows. Time Able Baker 12:00 0 1 12:05 os o.865 12:07 0.707 0.707 1210 0.866 as 1215 I 0 Now they were more confused than ever, and they returned with relief to their struggles against the flypaper. a Fuv’s-eve view 65 ‘Only when they finally broke free and became airborne were they able to size up their previous predicament. Able had been lo- ‘cated on the table at 6 o'clock and Baker at 3 o'clock, and each had had a very different view of the minute hand. & nas ‘The minute hand as Able saw it (horizontal line) and as Baker saw it (vertical line is shown here in a single drawing for each of several observations. ‘What each fly had measured was a projection of the minute hand conto his own plane of vision. This was like measuring a shadow as the sun moves overhead. Or to put it another way, Able had been watching one side of a right triangle while Baker was intent on another side. The minute hand was the hypotenuse of the triangle and its length never changed. ‘The apparently conflicting measurements of Able and Baker are linked together by an inflexible rule. Able’s measurements will always grow as Baker's diminish, and vice versa. And had the two flies known about the Pythagorean theorem they could have de- termined the true length of the minute hand from any one pair of65 THE NUMBER OF THINGS 12:01 beginning to Baker: diminish from toward 0 beginning Able: 10 grow trom 0 12:05 1207's B: 0.866 B: 0707 Ar 0.5 Ar 0707 12:10 1214 B 0s B: Approach: ing 0 Ar 0866 As Approach: ing 1 measurements; Able’s view squared plus Baker's view squared equals Clock’s view squared e+e 05? + 0.8667 0.707 + 0.70 PELOSI The theorem translates two limited views into a single objective reality Our block of granite behaved in a similar manner. Although T ‘was pushing east and my friend was pushing north, the granite actually moved 5 yards in a direction roughly northeast by north. fur’s-eve view 67 René Descartes used the Pythagorean theorem in the same way as the basis for his geometry. His Pythagorean “distance formula” specifies the length of any line in terms of the fixed coordinates on graph. Here is a simplified city map with point 4 at 2nd Street and 3rd Avenue, and point B at Sth Street and 7th Avenue. What is the distance between 4 and B? y = streets ‘The distance formula is: AB*— (Ax)? + (Ay)*. “Ax” means the difference between the two values of x, which values in this case are seven and three. “Ay” means the difference between the two values of y, five and two. So AB® = (7 —3)° + (5—2)'=4 + ¥=25; and AB equals five. ‘The Pythagorean theorem is the fundamental formula for meas- uring distances in a plane. The same measuring problem exists in three dimensions, and wwe should like to enlist the viewpoint of a new pair of flies, Dog and Charlie. Stationed as were Baker and Able, they confront not a watch but a glass box measuring 2 inches on a side and | inch in height. In the box is a pencil sharpened at both ends; it is the longest pencil that will fit inside the box. Question: where is the pencil and how long is it?68 THE NUMBER OF THINGS Charlie reports the pencil is about 2.236 inches long and runs from the upper left corner of the box to the lower right corner. Dog agrees as to the length of the pencil, but he claims it runs from the lower left corner to the upper right. ‘Again, from the air they could have solved the problem of where the pencil was, and with the Pythagorean theorem they could have determined its length. Dog's view The theorem works in three dimensions just as it does in two. In this case e+ pad PEE : The pencil is 3 inches long. An interval of space can appear differently to differently placed ‘observers while the true interval remains the same. ‘The Pythagorean theorem can be used in four or five or more dimensions even though it may not be easy to visualize the result It is not difficult, however, to sce how the theorem relates any ‘number of dimensions pair by pair. ‘A box measuring 3 by 4 by 12 inches has an interior diagonal of 13 inches. PE ayy 1s rur's-ere view 69 ass pe ‘The answer could as well have been reached by using the stand- ard two-dimensional equation, a® +b? =c We consider first only the end of the box, and we find that the diagonal of this rectangle is five, since 3° + 4° = 5° 3 ‘Then we slice the box lengthwise through this diagonal. We now have a new two-dimensional right tangle with sides of S and 12 and a hypotenuse of 13, since * + 1 ‘The same breakdown can be achieved in any number of dimen: sions, For example Fa 4 12 4 se = 85 Which can be analyzed into three simple equations: Fie 12 = 13 1 + 84 = 85)TO THE NUMBER OF THINGS The 3-D problem can even be translated into 2 two-dimensional diagram. Any two Lines meeting at right angles represent two dimensions. The hypotenuse represents these two dimensions combined in the form of a single, one-dimensional line. 2 SS s / We can add a third dimension by showing that either leg is itself 4 hypotenuse representing two dimensions rather than just one. _ ‘The large square can be sliced up and reassembled to form either two squares or three squares. Fuy's-ere view 71 e “SS72 THE wuMBER oF THINGS Three hundred years ago the mathematician Pierre de Fermat investigated the properties of Pythagorean triples like S-12-13. He asked himself whether the Pythagorean theorem could be applied to cubes as well as t0 squares, Limiting the problem to integral solutions (cubes whose sides can be measured in whole numbers), Fermat stated it this way: Find two eubes whose sum is a cube. Fermat concluded that no such cubes exist; a’ 4 6" —c" is impossible when a, 6, and c are positive whole numbers. He added that the equation a” + 6" —e° has no integral solu- tion if m is more than two, and this statement is known as Fermat’s “Last Theorem.” ‘The proof? All we know is what he wrote in the margin of his copy of Arithmetica by Diophantus of Alexandria: “Thave discovered a truly wonderful proof of this, which, however, this margin is too narrow to hold.” THE PRE-PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM U ‘Now that we have begun to see how important the Pythagorean theorem is in the history of mathematics and physics, we are about to be disillusioned. At one time it was suggested that the theorem was too sophisti cated to have been discovered as early as the sixth century 3. ‘when Pythagoras lived. It also appears that the story of the Egyptian rope-stretchers and their 3 : 4 : 5 right triangle is pure myth. The Egyptians did know that (3-3) + (4-4) — (5-5); but there is little to suggest that they knew 3, 4, and 5 to be the sides of a right-angled triangle or that they were acquainted with what was later called the Py- thagorean theorem. (On the other hand, mathematicians in India knew how to con- struct a right-angled triangle in 400 3.c., if not many centuries earlier. They were also ropestretchers and their knowledge was summarized in their “Rules of the Cord,” or Sulvasutras. The initial theorem of the Suivasutras concerns a triangle formed by bending a 90-unit cord which has been divided into sections of 15, 36, and 39 units, respectively. Another theorem states that “the cord stretched in the diagonal of an oblong produces (when multiplied by itself) the sum of what the cords forming the longer and shorter sides separately produce.” These theorems, ap- parently, were not proved. A related theorem appears in an old Chinese astronomical text, the Chou-pei, literally “The Thigh-bone of Chou.” The Chowpei, which may date back t0 400 #.C., or even to 1100 8.C., contains the following unlabeled diagram. nTA tHe NUMBER oF THINGS ‘The instructions read to this effect: “Break the Tine, making the Kou, or breadth, three and the Ku, or length, four; then the distance ig the corners is five.” ‘The diagram is almost identical with the figure we used to illus- trate Pythagoras’s statement that cight triangles plus one make a square. More startling than the Chinese text are the still older Sumerian and Babylonian discoveries of Otto Neugebauer and Abraham Sachs during the past quarter century. ‘Sumer was an ancient country located on the fertile plains of the lower Euphrates River valley in what is now southern Iraq. After about 2000 s.c., Sumer and the area immediately north of it were known as Babylonia, ‘The Sumerians and Babylonians kept records on clay tablets. ‘Their cuneiform characters were made by pressing the wedge- shaped end of a stick into soft clay, which later hardened. Surviv- THE PRE-PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM 75 ing cuneiform tablets date from as far back as the Ur dynasty about 3000 .c., nearly a thousand years before the great days of Babylon, One recently deciphered Babylonian text—probably written about 1800 B.c.—contains this problem: A post of length 30 stands against a wall. The end has slipped down a distance of six. How far did the lower end move? ‘The problem would be illustrated like this: ao 30 fot | The answer can only be found by using the Pythagorean theo- rem: x* + 247 = 30°, ‘The answer is 18, making a triangle with sides 18, 24, and 30. Dividing each side by six, we are left with a good old Pythag- orean 3 : 4 : 5 right triangle. So Pythagoras was no more the first to discover “his” theorem than Columbus was the first to discover that the world was round. Pythagoras himself was some twelve centuries behind the times, This is not just a matter of the Babylonians knowing that 3* 4 4° = S*. Another ancient cuneiform tablet reveals that Baby- lonian mathematicians were perfectly well acquainted with the basic idea of the Pythagorean triple,76 THE NUMBER OF THINGS Although part of the tablet is missing, Neugebauer was able to show that it contains a list of 15 triples which satisfy the equation © —b' =@. Furthermore, these triples are listed according to the relative size of the right triangle that each triple describes; the smaller angle of each successive triangle varies gradually from about 44° to about 31°. ‘The tablet was inscribed between 1900 and 1600 3.c. The new Babylonian archeological finds detract little from the all-round status of the Pythagoreans as brilliant innovators, but they do take the edge off the popular legend. Pythagoras traveled extensively in the Near East and was un- doubtedly well acquainted with Babylonian mathematics; it is only recently that we have known how thoroughly sophisticated the Babylonians were. They even had a god of science named Nebo. The scientific trad ‘8. when the Sumerian city states dominated southern Mesopo- tamia, The Sumerians of that time had named the constellations and the nearer planets. They also had invented the sexagesimal number system which is still used by astronomers everywhere. It is based on powers of 60 (or of the fraction "i») and is the origin ‘of our “minutes” and “seconds.” By about 1900 p.c.. the time of the first dynasty of Babylon under Hammurabi, King of Sumer and Akkad, the Pythagorean triangle was known and the value of pi had been estimated as three. Early Babylonian mathematicians ad even posed the problem of finding a solution to the equation e+e 28. Somewhat later the Babylonians worked out the sums of geo- metric progressions such as 1i2+4+8416432=65 which can be written BEBE PEP EME BHM 1 They were also preoccupied with the sums of arithmetical pro- THE PRE-PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM 77 gressions. There is an obvious and essential relationship between the patterned numbers of Pythagoras and Babylonian sums like 1 Aas. 143454749 2HH+6FSFI0.. In 600 w.c. Nineveh had been destroyed and the Assyrian Em- Pire had collapsed. Nebuchadnezzar Il was soon to become king of Babylon, and trade between Babylon and Greece was flourish ing. The Ionian Greeks had prosperous cities on the coast of what now is Turkey and on the large off-shore islands as well. They had even established commercial towns on the southeastern coast of the Black Sea for trade with Babylon. The most important Tonian cultural center was the mainland city of Miletus. It was here that Pythagoras, from the nearby island ‘of Samos, studied with his principal teacher, Thales. Both men must have absorbed the wisdom of Babylonian science—as well as some of its mystical foolishness—from the first days of their edu- cation onward.A SINE OF THE TIME 8 ‘The ancient Babylonian problem of the post standing against 1 wall is more ingenious than it may first appear, The idea of the ‘top of the post slipping downward against the wall suggests a way ‘of comparing triangles of different shapes. A line of posts, each of which has slipped farther than the next ‘one, would look like this from the side: Each post is the hypotenuse of a right triangle. All five triangles share the same right angle and have hypotenuses of equal length. Also, as the vertical sides of successive triangles grow shorter, the horizontal sides grow longer This sounds like Baker's and Able's dese hand of the watch In the present case, suppose the posts are standing on a glass floor, leaning against a glass wall . . . with Baker on the far side ‘of the wall and Able on the floor below. Baker and Able would each describe the length of any one post in precisely the same way ” tions of the minute A SINE OF THE TIME 79 that they had reported the length of the hand of the watch at any cone time, S In both cases Baker would have been watching the sine of the angle between the horizontal and the post or between the hori- zontal and the minute hand, Able would have been watching the cosine. ‘The sine of an acute angle in a right triangle is defined as the side opposite the angle divided by the hypotenuse. When the hy- otemuse is one, the sine is equal to the opposite side ‘Similarly, the cosine—Able’s view—is equal to the side of the triangle adjacent to the angle when the hypotenuse equals one. @ tangent = PP =80 THE NUMBER OF THINGS ‘The tangent of the angle is equal to the opposite side divided by the adjacent side, and therefore to the sine divided by the cosine, As the minute hand moves, sine and cosine change together in such a way that the sum of their squares is always equal to one. sin? 4 cost = 18 =1 For example, in triangles with sides in the ratio of 7 : 24 : 25, or3:24:5: A\ sin=0.96 sin? 0.9216 sin =0.8 sin = 0.64 28 cos’ = 0.0784 cos = 0.6 cos? = 0.36 sin? 4 cost = 1.0000 sin? 4 05% = 1.00 This is the Pythagorean theorem stated as a fundamental prop- ‘sition in trigonometry. Trigonometry was invented in the second century, w.¢., by the astronomer Hipparchus of Rhodes and was further developed in Alexandria by Ptolemy in the second century, 8.0, ‘The word is derived from srigonon (triangle) and metria (meas- urement). Another way to compare right triangles of various shapes is to hold a carpenter's square against two tacks and move it in an are Ly al WY L \ The result is a series of triangles with a common hypotenuse. The inside comer of the carpenter’s square, as it moves, traces a semicircle, The right-angled corners of all the triangles lie on this circle and the common hypotenuse—the distance between the two tacks—turns out to be the circle’s diameter. ZN A rightangled triangle fits precisely into half a circle. The reason why becomes more obvious if we think of 2 rectangle in- scribed in a circle82 THE NUMBER OF THINGS The diagonal of the rectangle divides both rectangle and circle into two equal halves. The discovery that a semicircle contains and defines a right angle is usually attributed to Thales, who is said to have sacrificed a bull in honor of his divine insight. But again recent discoveries indi- cate that the Babylonians were acquainted with the fact long be- fore Thales or Pythagoras was born. However, Thales was likely the first man to prove that his ob- servation was correct. He was certainly the first to appreciate the fundamental importance of proving a mathematical assumption, He also proved that the sum of all three angles in any triangle is equal to two right angles. We accept this fact as utterly obvious, but itis nevertheless essential if we wish, for example, to determine whether two triangles are similar to one another. A simple gco- metric demonstration of the fact consists in folding three corners of any triangle: the three angles then come together, showing that they add up to 180 LOR Regardless of who first discovered the relationship, the associa- tion of circles and right triangles was a most productive one. If we construct any perpendicular line on the diameter of a circle and connect the points where this line and the diameter in- tersect the circle . . . the result is three similar right triangles. c ASINE OF THE Time 83 Two triangles are similar if two angles of one are equal to two angles of the other, Triangle ABC is similar to each of the smaller triangles: it shares angle B with CBD and angle A with ACD, and every triangle contains a right angle. Triangles are the fundamental figures in the study of similarity because they are the only figures guaranteed to be similar if their angles are equal ‘A proposition vital to the understanding of the nature of the Pythagorean theorem is the following one, credited to Thales: The sides of similar triangles are proportional ‘The ratio of sides ¢ and a is the same as the ratio of sides d and 5, which is the same as the ratio of sides a and c. -sin'Z A=sin ¢ BCD Or we can say e:d:a=d:f:b=azb:c In numbers, using a 3 : 4 : 5 triangle, this would be eee ee 1S. 20 15 Us 20 mS rr 5 Every side of the small triangle is the short leg of some triangle, Every side of the middle triangle is the long leg of some triangle. Every side of the large triangle is the hypotenuse of some tri- angle.84° THE NUMBER OF THINGS Using the fact that the sides of similar triangles are proportional to one another, Thales was able to compute the distance of a boat from the shore; he only needed to know his own distance above sea level and the angle that his sighting made with the horizontal. He also could calculate the height of a pyramid by comparing its shadow with the shadow of an object of known height, such as the gnomon, or finger, of a sun dial. ‘The same fact leads also to a direct proof of the Pythagorean theorem. » ele «| © |. Staring wish ee verete ri oa & @ some elementary algebra shows that @—=ec and bY =Je @ +P Secticacle+f) e+! e+ Rae) And a little jigsaw work shows visually that @=ec and B= fe. The fact that o* ec and 6*— fe gives us an answer to the question: A SINE OF THE TIME 85 Why, in the square on the hypotenuse of a right triangle, is the gnomon c* — a always equal to the square on the remaining side (b) of the triangle? We already know that, in the figure below, BoN+Y=fe =M4X=e. We now construct the square M + Y. equal to a” @=M4LY. Square M + Y is equal to rectangle M + X, and Y is therefore equal to X. e ‘Substituting X for ¥ in the first equation, we may conclude that BoNGxX= — a.PROOF AND PUZZLE 9 ‘There are many ways of proving the Pythagorean theorem. ‘Most of them are simpler than Euclid’s over-familiar “windmill” proof, which may have been first suggested by Eudoxus a genera- tion before Euclid. Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer called this “a mousetrap proof” and “a proof walking on stilts, nay, a mean, underhand Euclid proves a* equal to ec by way of a pair of identical obtuse triangles; one triangle is half the area of a” and the other is half the area of ec. The same procedure also shows that 5 is equal to fc. There are, of course, many ways of slicing a big square to make two smaller squares. Some of the traditional diagrams and proofs have names like “bride’s chair,” “two-horned puzrle” and “Fran- ciscan’s hood. The following trio of popular versions of the theorem is repro duced by Walter Lietzmann in his book, Der Pyihagoreische Lehrsatz.* * Prof. Water Lietzmann, Der Pythogorciche Lehrts(Leiprg, 1981, B. G. Teubner Yevgeni Foust) PROOF AND ruzzuc 87 RS TE The most straightforward way to dissect Pythagorean squares is to construct the large square above the triangle’s hypotenuse rather than below it, allowing it to overlap the two smaller squares. The small squares are automatically cut into the proper pieces. In the second diagram below. the sections into which the lower square is divided can be reassembled to form the two smaller Perhaps the most elegant dissection is this one:88 THE NUMBER OF THINGS The last two diagrams appear to be totally different from one another. They are closely related, however, as we can see if we fill an area with small squares (a and 6) and superimpose om it 1 pattern of large squares (c*). BEER Other dissections run to more ornate patterns, and some include pieces that must be tilted or turned upside down. we PRooF ano puzzie 89 1 square, (b— a)? 2 triangles each with sides of a, b, and e 2 narrow triangles each with sides of ¢, b—a, and a2 (the diagonal of a). We have illustrated various ways of dissecting a triangle with sides measuring 3, 4, and 5 units, respectively. The principles ap- ply, of course, to all right triangles regardless of their size or shape —even if the triangle is a theoretical one with side a equal to zero. Here, for example, are five right triangles, all with the same hypotenuse. All are dissected in the same manner; the smaller square (a°) always appears in the center of the square built on the hypotenuse. In the fifth triangle, side b is equal to the hypotenuse (c) and side a is equal to zero. The very small square is (b —a)* In the last dissection, the square on side b of the triangle is divided into:90 we NumseR oF THINGS Why does the Pythagorean theorem work only with triangles that contain a right angle? The last “triangle” on the previous page contained, in theory, two right angles and an included side that was equal to zero, Con- sider now a theoretical triangle in which the length of side ¢ is equal to the lengths of a and 6 combined. This triangle will have one angle of 180° and two angles equal to zero, We can represent it as a single line with two sides or we can separate the line a + b from the line ¢. C= 180° / SS ee We will build a square on side ¢ and try to relate the area of this square to the areas of squares constructed on sides a and b. One way of doing this is to put a in the center of c* and divide b* into four equal areas. Four small rectangles are left unaccounted for. On side @ we now construct. in addition to the square, a rectangle with the dimensions a x b. We also add an identical rectangle to the square constructed on side b. proof ano rurzie 91 ab ECHIEEE ‘The Pythagorean theorem does not work because there is some- thing left over: c* = a? + b* + 2 ab. ‘What will happen to our diagram if we gradually increase the lengths of sides a and 6? Both a° and 6 will grow larger at the expense of the shaded areas. (In each of the four drawings below, the pieces that make up the figure above the triangle can be reassembled—without tilting any of them—to form the square below the triangle.) a S oN In the last figure, angle C has become a right angle; the shaded areas which began as rectangles have collapsed and now = @ +6420)92 THE NUMBER OF THINGS A number of classic puzzles are based on special cases of the Pythagorean theorem which involve dividing a square into two or five or ten equal squares. Two diagonals will divide any square into two equal squares, a fact which allowed Archytas to draw the square root of two even though arithmetic could not define it with rational numbers. In this Case, a equals b and the sides of the pertinent right triangle are in the ratio: 1, 1, 2. A triangle with sides of 1, 2, and 3 is the basis for puzzles in- volving the Greek cross: Cut the cross into pieces—as few as possible—that can be reassembled to form a square. A solution with real class is that of the master puzzle maker, Henry Dudeney, who turns a Greek cross into a Hakenkreuz. proos ano purzis 93 Other dissections reveal more clearly the Pythagorean nature of the problem, 4 v In regard to the last cross: we can take the small square which is the left arm of the cross and move it into the lower right-hand commer.‘THE NUMBER OF THINGS ‘The result is two squares—a" on top and b* beneath it; b* is tour times the size of a‘. The whole figure is already cut so that the two triangles on the left can be moved to the right side of the figure, forming a single square (c*). Notice that c* is composed of five equal areas: each triangle has sides equal to a, b, and ¢ and an area equal to a The Greek cross is a shape that “its with itself and can com pletely cover an area. Dudeney's dissection is a square cut from the arms of four Greek crosses which meet at central point, c All solutions to the Greek-cross puzzle are based on the fact that a Greek cross is made of five equal squares, and so is the square on the hypotenuse of a triangle with sides of 1, 2, and y/5. Cor AND ruzzic 95 6 —v—4 L The above figure also contains the key to dividing a line in a golden section. The side, b, of the square, 6°, is immediately divided in a golden section when the length c is marked off on line ath 3- V5. 3—v5_V5—1 Wor «2 A square may also be divided into ten equal squares with a tri- angle whose sides are 1, 3, and y/10.96 THE NUMBER OF THINGS The same principle applies to any right triangle in which one leg is a multiple of the other leg, as in Pyaar PES? =26 Peas. FROM SQUARES TO CRESCENTS 10 The important insight to be gained from te Pythagorean theo- rem is not that we have to use literal squares to relate two sides of aright triangle to the hypotenuse. It is that we have to use an area, for what the Pythagoreans called a “plane number,” because it in volves two dimensions. ‘The two legs and the hypotenuse are related by way of similar areas of any shape whatsoever. For example, each side can be represented as the diagonal of a rectangle. The three rectangles are similar to one another In triangles with sides measured in Whole numbers, the theorem cean be proved by dividing all three rectangles into a specific num- ber of identical small rectangles, each with a diagonal equal to one. In the case of a 3: 4:5 triangle, the sum of 9 small rec- tangles and 16 small rectangles is 25, eel i i 4 Another example involves octagons. Take half a square (an isos- cdles right triangle) and build a regular octagon on cach of its sides. ”