hen comments on AALWA: Ask any LessWronger anything - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Will_Newsome 12 January 2014 02:18AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 15 January 2014 04:06:42AM 0 points [-]

That's a good point about Hippocrates, I'd forgotten about him. Do you have a source handy on Thales and Pythagoras? I don't doubt it, it's just a gap I should fill. So far as I remember, a proof that the square root of two is irrational came out of the Pythagorean school, but that's all I can think of. I hadn't heard anything like that about Thales.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 15 January 2014 05:33:13AM 1 point [-]

I linked to the relevant Wikipedia articles in my comment.

Comment author: [deleted] 15 January 2014 03:30:33PM 0 points [-]

Ah, but note the 'history' section of the Thales article. It rather supports my picture, if it supports anything at all.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 16 January 2014 01:55:23AM 0 points [-]

Why? If you mean that Thales learned the result from the Babylonians, the point is that he appears to have been the first to bother proving it.