And the Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with

the support of King's College London and the Lever Hume Trust.

Today's episode, The Man with the Golden Thai Pythagoras.

Philosophers have always loved mathematics.

It's not hard to see why. One of the things philosophers are most interested in is knowledge.

Indeed, as we found last time, one of the earliest Greek philosophers Xenophonies already made a contrast between really having

knowledge of the truth and having mere beliefs. And if you're looking for a nice

solid example of knowledge, mathematics is just about the best example there is.

You don't merely believe that two-plains. mathematics is just about the best example there is.

You don't merely believe that 2 plus 2 equals 4,

you actually know it.

Or at least this is what most people think,

that mathematics is a kind of gold standard against which other supposed examples of knowledge can be measured.

This way of looking at mathematics goes back to Greek philosophy,

but mathematics itself goes back even further.

I'm not just talking about counting or adding simple sums here.

For instance, the Babylonians and Egyptians were accomplished in the sorts of mathematics

required for land measurement and astronomy.

We saw already that Thales, the first pre-Socratic philosopher, did some astronomy, and that he may have

got some of his astronomical knowledge of

of mathematics there.

Thegion,

...