The Death of Pythagoras

[Philosophy Now]

Bruce Pennington tells us how Pythagoras became a has-bean, while another Bruce Pennington drew the portraits…

http://philosophynow.org/issues/78/The_ ... Pythagoras

[Thundril]

Another Pythagorean legend has it that the Pythagoreans, as well as believing that 'all is number', also believed in a single Creator God, an architect of the Universe, who was THE mathematician and therefore was Himself a number, one which expressed the harmonies at the base of His creation. According to this story, when a member of the movement proved (by a very simple and utterly undeniable proof) that irrational numbers existed (specifically, that there cannot be a number expressing the ratio of the side of a square to the diagonal of that square) this threw the movement into a profound crisis, from which it never really recovered.
This may be the first, and possible the only, example of a religion accepting a scientific refutation of its own central tenets.
According to the story, the first member who placed this simple proof in the public domain was taken out to sea by the faithful members of the sect, and drowned!