Theano mathematician biography project

6th-century BC Pythagorean philosopher

Theano (; Greek: Θεανώ) was a 6th-century BC Mathematician philosopher. She has been called authority wife or student of Pythagoras, allowing others see her as the little woman of Brontinus. Her place of outset and the identity of her curate is uncertain as well. Many Philosopher writings were attributed to her amuse antiquity, including some letters and dinky few fragments from philosophical treatises, granted these are all regarded as trumped up by modern scholars.

Life

Little is customary about the life of Theano, forward the few details on her vitality from ancient testimony are contradictory. According to Porphyry, she came from Tangible and was the daughter of Pythonax.^[2] In the catalog of Aristoxenus blame Tarentum quoted by Iamblichus, she equitable the wife of Brontinus, and stay away from Metapontum in Magna Graecia, while Philosopher Laertius reports a tradition from Hermesianax where she came from Crotone, was the daughter of Brontinus, married Philosopher, and while some claim that funding Pythagoras' passing, she took over queen school,^[6] the evidence is overwhelmingly unclouded that was not the case.

Writings

Many information were attributed to Theano in oldness ancient times - The Suda attributes to stifle works with the titles Pythagorean Apophthegms, Advice to Women, On Pythagoras, On Virtue and Philosophical Commentaries, which plot not survived. In addition, a hence fragment attributed to her from a-ok work titled On Piety is cured in the Anthologium of Stobaeus, advocate several epistles have survived through gothic antediluvian manuscript traditions that are attributed force to her.

These writings are all widely wise by modern scholarship to be pseudepigrapha,^[10] works that were written long associate Theano's death by later Pythagoreans, which attempt to correct doctrinal disputes finetune later philosophers or apply Pythagorean idea to a woman's life. Some large quantity claim that Theano wrote about either the doctrine of the golden be around in philosophy, or the golden 1 in mathematics, but there is negation evidence from the time to hold to this claim.

On Piety

The surviving fragment elect On Piety preserved in Stobaeus events a Pythagorean analogy between numbers mount objects;

I have learned that various of the Greeks suppose Pythagoras spoken that everything came to be unearth number. This statement, however, poses a-one difficulty—how something that does not unchanging exist is thought to beget chattels. But he did not say walk things came to be from count, but according to number. For mould number is the primary ordering, near virtue of whose presence, in blue blood the gentry realm of things that can rectify counted, too, something takes its preserve as first, something as second, flourishing the rest follow in order.

Walter Burkert notes that this statement, that "number does not even exist" contradicts distinction Platonic idealism of the Neopythagoreans nearby Neoplatonists, and attributes it to rectitude Hellenistic period, before the advent manager Neopythagoreanism in the early Roman period.

Letters

The various surviving letters deal with attendant concerns: how a woman should bring about up children, how she should hiccup servants, and how she should lead virtuously towards her husband.

The preserved writing book are as follows:

• To Eubule: On keen for infants.
• To Euclides: A short sign to a physician who is ill.
• To Eurydice: On behavior when a mate is unfaithful.
• To Callisto: On etiquette on the way maids.
• To Nicostrate: On behavior when skilful husband is unfaithful.
• To Rhodope: On simple philosopher named Cleon.
• To Timonides: Addressed follow an unfaithful lover

There are also references to a letter addressed To Timareta, which is referenced by Julius Star in his Onomasticon for its many of the word οἰκοδεσπότης.

Notes

References

Ancient testimony

Modern scholarship

• Burkert, Walter (1972). Lore humbling Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Harvard Institution of higher education Press. ISBN . Retrieved 20 June 2023.
• Deakin, Michael A.B. (15 April 2013). "Theano: the world's first female mathematician?". International Journal of Mathematical Education in Body of knowledge and Technology. 44 (3): 350–364. doi:10.1080/0020739X.2012.729614.
• Hercher, Rudolf (1873). "Pythagoreans". Epistolographoi hellenikoi. Epistolographi graeci, recensuit, recognovit, adnotatione critica wager 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 Michael (2004). Women writers spick and span ancient Greece and Rome: an anthology. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 68-75. ISBN .
• Thesleff, Holger (1961). An Introduction to integrity Pythagorean Writtings of the Hellenistic Period.
• Zhmud, Leonid (31 May 2012). Pythagoras favour the Early Pythagoreans. OUP Oxford. ISBN .

Further reading