Pythagoras and patterns

Pythagoras Tree 2 by Rafael Espericueta 

You may recall from your high school math that the Pythagorean Theorem says that the square of the long side of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two shorter sides. It doesn’t really matter if you remember that. The important thing about Pythagoras’ discovery is not the formula itself—it’s the fact that there is a formula.

Pythagoras was the first human to see that there are universal patterns. It is those patterns, those unfailing regularities, that allow us to do everything from calculating the interest on a savings account to sending rockets to the moon.

We may wear different clothes, worship different deities, speak different tongues, and eat different foods, but we are held on earth by the force of gravity which is the same from Albuquerque to Albania.

Pythagoras was the first person to discover those regularities behind the immense variety of everyday experience.

~ J. Michael Orenduff