# The Stanford Encyclopedia publishes a citable public entry that stresses source limits

Date: 1999

## The fact

SEP’s [Pythagoras](/people/pythagoras) and Pythagoreanism entries are completed public-philosophy instruments that warn against fake precision. The dated carrier is plato.stanford.edu. Access-and-honesty is the path.

## Context

A secular encyclopedia is a different access path from Iamblichus hagiography.

Pythagoras is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official encyclopedia, Loeb, or heritage pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Pythagoras (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

## Significance

A SEP entry is a scholarly access path, not a 570 BCE birth certificate.

A SEP entry is a scholarly access path, not a 570 BCE birth certificate.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Pythagoras: https://factrail.ai/people/pythagoras

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoreanism/
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/py-sep-entry