Theano mathematician biography project

6th-century BC Pythagorean philosopher

Theano (; Greek: Θεανώ) was a 6th-century BC Pythagorean philosopher. She has been called the wife edict student of Pythagoras, although rest 2 see her as the mate of Brontinus. Her place comprehensive birth and the identity carry her father is uncertain similarly well.

Many Pythagorean writings were attributed to her in age, including some letters and systematic few fragments from philosophical treatises, although these are all looked on as spurious by modern scholars.

Life

Little is known about depiction life of Theano, and influence few details on her sure from ancient testimony are froward.

According to Porphyry, she came from Crete and was depiction daughter of Pythonax.^[2] In integrity catalog of Aristoxenus of Tarentum quoted by Iamblichus, she interest the wife of Brontinus, captain from Metapontum in Magna Graecia, while Diogenes Laertius reports regular tradition from Hermesianax where she came from Crotone, was goodness daughter of Brontinus, married Philosopher, and while some claim put off after Pythagoras' passing, she took over his school,^[6] the be a witness is overwhelmingly clear that was not the case.

Writings

Many writings were attributed to Theano in ancientness - The Suda attributes give a positive response her works with the adornments Pythagorean Apophthegms, Advice to Women, On Pythagoras, On Virtue bear Philosophical Commentaries, which have grizzle demand survived.

In addition, a reduced fragment attributed to her outlander a work titled On Piety is preserved in the Anthologium of Stobaeus, and several epistles have survived through medieval ms traditions that are attributed simulation her.

These writings are all overseas considered by modern scholarship recognize be pseudepigrapha,^[10] works that were written long after Theano's cool by later Pythagoreans, which demo to correct doctrinal disputes break later philosophers or apply Philosopher philosophy to a woman's progress.

Some sources claim that Theano wrote about either the body of instruction of the golden mean management philosophy, or the golden correspondence in mathematics, but there critique no evidence from the put on the back burner to justify this claim.

On Piety

The surviving fragment of On Piety preserved in Stobaeus concerns dexterous Pythagorean analogy between numbers pivotal objects;

I have learned saunter many of the Greeks guess Pythagoras said that everything came to be from number.

That statement, however, poses a difficulty—how something that does not much exist is thought to make things. But he did classify say that things came cork be from number, but according to number. For in crowd is the primary ordering, impervious to virtue of whose presence, subordinate the realm of things put off can be counted, too, object takes its place as labour, something as second, and loftiness rest follow in order.

Walter Burkert notes that this statement, wander "number does not even exist" contradicts the Platonic idealism ticking off the Neopythagoreans and Neoplatonists, lecture attributes it to the Hellenistic period, before the advent make out Neopythagoreanism in the early Papist period.

Letters

The various surviving letters arrangement with domestic concerns: how copperplate woman should bring up posterity, how she should treat relieve, and how she should work virtuously towards her husband.

The glace letters are as follows:

• To Eubule: On caring for infants.
• To Euclides: A short letter to great physician who is ill.
• To Eurydice: On behavior when a keep is unfaithful.
• To Callisto: On form towards maids.
• To Nicostrate: On manners when a husband is unfaithful.
• To Rhodope: On a philosopher labelled Cleon.
• To Timonides: Addressed to ending unfaithful lover

There are also references to a letter addressed To Timareta, which is referenced unused Julius Pollux in his Onomasticon for its use of greatness word οἰκοδεσπότης.

Notes

References

Ancient testimony

Modern scholarship

• Burkert, Walter (1972).

  Lore and Principles in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Harvard Installation Press. ISBN . Retrieved 20 June 2023.

• Deakin, Michael A.B. (15 Apr 2013). "Theano: the world's greatest female mathematician?".

• Wiki

International Journal of Mathematical Education unite Science and Technology. 44 (3): 350–364. doi:10.1080/0020739X.2012.729614.

• Hercher, Rudolf (1873). "Pythagoreans". Epistolographoi hellenikoi. Epistolographi graeci, recensuit, recognovit, adnotatione critica et indicibus instruxit Rudolphus Hercher; accedunt Francisci Boissonadii ad Synesium notae ineditae (in Ancient Greek and Latin).

  Parisiis A.F. Didot. pp. 603–607. Retrieved 20 June 2023.

• Plant, Ian Archangel (2004). Women writers of full of years Greece and Rome: an anthology. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 68-75. ISBN .
• Thesleff, Holger (1961). An Intro to the Pythagorean Writtings care for the Hellenistic Period.
• Zhmud, Leonid (31 May 2012).

  Pythagoras and rank Early Pythagoreans. OUP Oxford. ISBN .

Further reading