Archytas
Archytas | |
|---|---|
 Bust from Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum, once identified as Archytas, now thought to be Pythagoras | |
| Born | 435/410 BC |
| Died | 360/350 BC |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Classical Greek philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| Pythagoreanism | |
Notable ideas | Doubling the cube Infinite universe |
Archytas (/ˈɑːrkɪtəs/; Greek: Ἀρχύτας; 435/410–360/350 BC) was an Ancient Greek mathematician, music theorist, statesman, and strategist from the ancient city of Taras (Tarentum) in modern Apulia, Southern Italy. He was a scientist and philosopher affiliated with the Pythagorean school and famous for being the reputed founder of mathematical mechanics and a friend of Plato.
As a Pythagorean, Archytas believed that arithmetic (logistic), rather than geometry, provided the basis for satisfactory proofs, and developed the most famous argument for the infinity of the universe in antiquity.