Page 13 - Modern Spatiotemporal Geostatistics
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xii Modern Spatiotemporal Geostatistics
The book is dedicated to the unknown Pythagorean. He was a student
at the famous Pythagorean school of ancient Greece (ca. 6th century B.C.), a
young man who for the first time in history proved an irrefutable truth by the
power of reason alone.* For his astonishing discovery that challenged the views
of the Establishment of the time he was cursed and declared blasphemous, and
then—legend has it—he was thrown into the sea. Thus perished in the dark
waters of the Mediterranean, remaining forever unknown, the young man who
brought us the light of reason...
George Christakos
Chapel Hill, 1999
* He proved that there is no quotient of integers whose square equals two (see, e.g., the
presentation of the Pythagorean School in Omnes, 1999).