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For textual studies relating to the ancient mathematical corpus the
efforts by the Danish philologist, 1. L. Heiberg (1854-1928), are
especially significant. Beginning with his doctoral dissertation,
Quaestiones Archimedeae (Copen hagen, 1879), Heiberg produced an
astonishing series of editions and critical studies that remain the
foundation of scholarship on Greek mathematical 4 science. For
comprehensiveness and accuracy, his editions are exemplary. In his
textual studies, as also in the prolegomena to his editions, he
carefully described the extant evidence, organized the manuscripts
into stemmata, and drew out the implications for the state of the
text. 5 With regard to his Archimedean work, Heiberg sometimes
betrayed signs of the philologist's occupational disease - the
tendency to rewrite a text deemed on subjective grounds to be
unworthy. 6 But he did so less often than his prominent 7
contemporaries, and not as to detract appreciably from the value of
his editions. In examining textual questions bearing on the
Archimedean corpus, he attempted to exploit as much as possible
evidence from the ancient commentators, and in some instances from
the medieval translations. It is here that opportunities abound for
new work, extending, and in some instances superseding, Heiberg's
findings. For at his time the availability of the medieval
materials was limited. In recent years Marshall Clagett has
completed a mammoth critical edition of the medieval Latin
tradition of Archimedes,8 while the bibliographical instruments for
the Arabic tradition are in good order thanks to the work of Fuat
Sezgin."
practice, some of which is translated into the standard forms of
public discourse, in publication, and then retranslated by readers
and adapted again to local practice at self-selected other sites.
Less may be left implicit, and additional personal and contextual
information is carried, by the "informal" methods of communication
which mediate local projects and international publication. But
both methods of communication are screens as well as conduits of
information. History and Background of the Volume When the planning
of this volume began in the spring of 1977, it seemed a natural
part of the mandate for the Yearbook. There had also been a number
of more specific calls for deeper studies of research in social and
historical context (3). These calls can be seen as giving
permission and legitimacy to ask questions otherwise seen as
irrelevant, or even disrespectful, and as attempts to develop new
perspectives from which to ask and to answer them. The implied and
expressed irreverence toward traditions and institutions of great
respect may have prolonged this process of initial apologetics. In
any case, in May 1977 the theme of 'The Social Process of
Scientific Investigation' was proposed to the Editorial Board for
Volume IV as "the heart of the subject. " That is, the ethnographic
and detailed historical study of actual scientific activity and
thinking at or close to the work site.
practice, some of which is translated into the standard forms of
public discourse, in publication, and then retranslated by readers
and adapted again to local practice at self-selected other sites.
Less may be left implicit, and additional personal and contextual
information is carried, by the "informal" methods of communication
which mediate local projects and international publication. But
both methods of communication are screens as well as conduits of
information. History and Background of the Volume When the planning
of this volume began in the spring of 1977, it seemed a natural
part of the mandate for the Yearbook. There had also been a number
of more specific calls for deeper studies of research in social and
historical context (3). These calls can be seen as giving
permission and legitimacy to ask questions otherwise seen as
irrelevant, or even disrespectful, and as attempts to develop new
perspectives from which to ask and to answer them. The implied and
expressed irreverence toward traditions and institutions of great
respect may have prolonged this process of initial apologetics. In
any case, in May 1977 the theme of 'The Social Process of
Scientific Investigation' was proposed to the Editorial Board for
Volume IV as "the heart of the subject. " That is, the ethnographic
and detailed historical study of actual scientific activity and
thinking at or close to the work site.
The present work has three principal objectives: (1) to fix the
chronology of the development of the pre-Euclidean theory of
incommensurable magnitudes beginning from the first discoveries by
fifth-century Pythago reans, advancing through the achievements of
Theodorus of Cyrene, Theaetetus, Archytas and Eudoxus, and
culminating in the formal theory of Elements X; (2) to correlate
the stages of this developing theory with the evolution of the
Elements as a whole; and (3) to establish that the high standards
of rigor characteristic of this evolution were intrinsic to the
mathematicians' work. In this third point, we wish to
counterbalance a prevalent thesis that the impulse toward
mathematical rigor was purely a response to the dialecticians'
critique of foundations; on the contrary, we shall see that not
until Eudoxus does there appear work which may be described as
purely foundational in its intent. Through the examination of these
problems, the present work will either alter or set in a new light
virtually every standard thesis about the fourth-century Greek
geometry. I. THE PRE-EUCLIDEAN THEORY OF INCOMMENSURABLE MAGNITUDES
The Euclidean theory of incommensurable magnitudes, as preserved in
Book X of the Elements, is a synthetic masterwork. Yet there are
detect able seams in its structure, seams revealed both through
terminology and through the historical clues provided by the
neo-Platonist commentator Proclus."
The present work has three principal objectives: (1) to fix the
chronology of the development of the pre-Euclidean theory of
incommensurable magnitudes beginning from the first discoveries by
fifth-century Pythago reans, advancing through the achievements of
Theodorus of Cyrene, Theaetetus, Archytas and Eudoxus, and
culminating in the formal theory of Elements X; (2) to correlate
the stages of this developing theory with the evolution of the
Elements as a whole; and (3) to establish that the high standards
of rigor characteristic of this evolution were intrinsic to the
mathematicians' work. In this third point, we wish to
counterbalance a prevalent thesis that the impulse toward
mathematical rigor was purely a response to the dialecticians'
critique of foundations; on the contrary, we shall see that not
until Eudoxus does there appear work which may be described as
purely foundational in its intent. Through the examination of these
problems, the present work will either alter or set in a new light
virtually every standard thesis about the fourth-century Greek
geometry. I. THE PRE-EUCLIDEAN THEORY OF INCOMMENSURABLE MAGNITUDES
The Euclidean theory of incommensurable magnitudes, as preserved in
Book X of the Elements, is a synthetic masterwork. Yet there are
detect able seams in its structure, seams revealed both through
terminology and through the historical clues provided by the
neo-Platonist commentator Proclus."
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