Pythagoras

On the Aegean Island of Samos, on the narrow arm of the harbor that juts farthest out to sea, there is a stark, skeletal structure. Immense shards of iron look as though they have fallen from the sky in the shape of a huge right triangle. One end of the diagonal has buried itself in the ground. Instead of a vertical line rising from the right angle, there is the statue of a man - lean and elongated, taller than life. He is reaching up with his right arm as though to conjure down the broken piece of iron that, if it were complete, would form the vertical of the triangle. Between his fingers and its lowest tip is a gap, such a gap as separates the finger of God from the finger of Adam in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The triangle is not this man’s creation. It is as old as the universe, as old as truth.

There is no argument but that this monument captures Western civilization’s image of Pythagoras, a native son of this magical island. The triangle is his classic symbol….but, more authentically, he has become the icon of an unexplained but undeniable gift: the ability of human minds to connect with the bedrock of rationality of the universe.

Excerpt: “The Music of Pythagoras” ~ Kitty Ferguson