Column Math How Pythagoras turned math into a tool for understanding reality The ‘music of the spheres’ was born from the effort to use numbers to explain the universe By Tom Siegfried Contributing Correspondent May 9, 2023 at 7:00 am The Pythagoreans believed that the motions of the heavenly bodies, with just the right ratios of their distances from a central fire, made pleasant music — a concept that evolved into the “music of the spheres.” NASA, ESA, the GOODS Team, and M.