Pythagoreans might regard today as the Day of the Tetraktys.
Some relevant epigraphs—
"Contrary to John Keats's First and Second Laws of Aesthetics ('Beauty is truth, truth beauty') truth and beauty are poles apart. Keats's ode itself, while denying this by precept, bears it out by example. Truth occupies the alethic pole of the intellectual sphere and beauty the aesthetic pole. Each is admirable in its way. The alethic pole exerts the main pull on science, in the broad sense: Wissenschaft, comprising mathematics, history, and all the hard and soft sciences in between. The aesthetic pole is the focus of belles lettres, music, art for art's sake."
— W. V. Quine in Quiddities
Weisheit und Wissenschaft: Studien zu Pythagoras, Philolaos und Platon
— Original title of Burkert's Lore and Science in Ancient Pytthagoreanism
"What song the Sirens sang…" — Sir Thomas Browne
Recommended:
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the Pythagorean acusmatici and mathematici
- Burkert on the same topic
- Father Robert Sokolowski's foreword to Rota's Indiscrete Thoughts