What is Apollos arrow?
According to legend, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras was sired by Apollo, the god of prophecy who provided the predictions for the Delphic oracle. At one point, Pythagoras was presented with an arrow said to have belonged to Apollo, which had magical powers that allowed him to dart across space and time, cure plagues, and so on. He founded a school – really a cult – that taught prediction using numbers, and worshipped Apollo. Many regard the Pythagoreans, as they were known, as the founders of Western science. So Apollo’s arrow is a metaphor in the book for numerical prediction. Today we use mathematical models to dart into the future.
