Pythagoras
3 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Pythagoras. All 3 are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the celebrated Greek philosopher, born in Samos, about 580- 570 b. c. He is said to have traveled extensively, especially in Egypt. Aversion to the tyranny of Polycrates, in Samos, is said to have been the cause of his quitting that island, and he ultimately settled, between 530ies at Southern Italy. There he set himself to carry out the purpose of instituting a society. Pythagoras himself was the chief, or general, general, of the order. Similar societies were founded in other cities of Italy. His teachings relating to these subjects became at length the occasion of a popular rising against the Pythagoreans at Crotona, 504 b. c.- the house in which they were assembled was burned, many perished and the rest were exiled. Similar tumults with similar results, took place in other cities. Among the doctrines of Pythagoras are the following: that numbers are the principles of all things; that the universe is a harmonious whole (kosmos), the heavenly bodies by their motion causing sounds (music of the spheres); that the soul is immortal, and passes successively into many bodies (metempsychosis); and that the highest aim and blessedness of man is likeness to the Deity. Pythagoras is said to have been the first who took the title of philosopher, and the first who applied the term Kosmos to the universe. He died in Metapontum, Magna Græcia, about 500 b. c.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
pi-thag'o-ras, a Greek mathematician and philosopher. He was born on the isle of Samos. He lived about 582-500 B. C. He traveled extensively and settled down at Crotona, a Greek town in Magna Graecia, Italy. Here he built up a school of philosophy or learning. Many of his ideas were fundamentally correct; others were errors. He set in motion the doctrine that the earth turns on its axis, and that the planets revolve about the sun. He believed that the heavenly bodies in their movements produced heavenly music, celestial harmony. The geometrical principle that the square described upon the hypotenuse of a plane right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares described upon the other two sides is called the Pythagorean Theorem. Pythagoras held to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. He thought that at death the soul passed into the body of some animal. He is said to have requested a man to leave off beating a certain dog, declaring that in the cry of the dog he recognized the voice of a deceased friend. See Ptolemy
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A celebrated philosopher born at Samos. He first made himself known in Greece at the Olympic games , where, when he was eighteen years old, he obtained the prize for wrestling. He also distinguished himself by his discoveries in geometry, astronomy, and mathematics. He was the first who supported the doctrine of metempsychosis, or transmigration of the soul into different bodies. He believed that the universe was created from a shapeless mass of passive matter by the hands of a powerful Being, who was the mover and soul of the world, and of whose substance the souls of mankind were a portion. The time and place of death of this great philosopher are unknown, but some suppose that he died at Metapontum about 497 years before Christ.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The three accounts treat Pythagoras as a working mathematician and astronomer; scholarship since has largely dismantled that picture. The Babylonian tablet Plimpton 322 and other cuneiform texts show the relation between the sides of a right triangle was in use more than a thousand years before his birth, and since Walter Burkert's work in the 1960s most historians treat Pythagoras as a religious and political teacher whose followers credited him with discoveries made later or elsewhere. Aiton's claim in 1910 that he "set in motion the doctrine that the earth turns on its axis, and that the planets revolve about the sun" is now assigned to the later Pythagorean Philolaus, not to Pythagoras himself. What survives intact is the outline the 1900 volume was frankest about: that almost nothing about the man can be verified, and that his influence — on number-mysticism, on the immortality of the soul, and on vegetarianism — outran his provable achievements.
Written for this edition, 2026.