In his search to determine interval ratios
in music (an interval being both the space
and the relationship between two sounding
notes), Pythagoras employed the lyre and
the monochord, a one-stringed instrument
he may have invented, which featured frets
on the fingerboard at various lengths. By
stopping the string exactly at the halfway
point, he produced an octave, or a ratio of
1:2. By dividing the string into various other
lengths, intervals of the fourth and fifth were
produced, and so on.4 Pythagoras and his
followers conceived of the universe as a vast
lyre, in which each planet, vibrating at a
specific pitch, in relationships similar
to the stopping of the monochord’s
string, harmonized with other
heavenly bodies to create a “music
of the spheres,” a concept which
remained viable for centuries. Even
though his theory was primitive,
it serves to give us a picture which
was later developed by philosophers
such as Boethius, Johannes Kepler,
the Rosicrucian Robert Fludd, and,
in contemporary times, by scientists
working with quantum relationships.