Slide 24
Slide 24 text
The clearest instance in the book, which I set up as a
sort of foundational myth, is the Pythagorean cult in the
fifth century BC, which becomes so devoted to the
perfect rationality of mathematics that it has trouble
dealing with the discovery of the existence of irrational
numbers. And so when one of its own, Hippasus of
Metapontum, starts telling people outside the group
that the world can’t be explained by mathematics alone,
legend has it that the leader of the group had him
drowned in a fit of anger.
“The desire to impose rationality, to make people or society
more rational, mutates ... into spectacular outbursts of
irrationality.” - Justin E.H. Smith
Irrationality