Scholars Decode Ancient Text, Shake Up Pre-calculus History

[Viggen]

On a lark they examined a theretofore unread section of The Method of Mechanical Theorems, which is the book's biggest claim to fame; no other copy of the work is known to exist. What they discovered made their jaws drop. A section from The Archimedes Palimpsest, which classics Professor Reviel Netz stumbled on during a visit to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Closer examination showed the Greeks understood the concept of infinity.

 

full article at Standford.edu

[Pantagathus]

Leave it to a mathmatician...

 

"The ancient Greeks developed mathematics into a theoretical discipline. But conventional wisdom has always held that they disliked dealing with infinity because it's a messy concept."

 

I haven't 'held' that... One only has to read the Plato's 'Critias' to know that they thought about it. At least the philosophers did

[Favonius Cornelius]

Leave it to a mathmatician...

 

"The ancient Greeks developed mathematics into a theoretical discipline. But conventional wisdom has always held that they disliked dealing with infinity because it's a messy concept."

 

I haven't 'held' that... One only has to read the Plato's 'Critias' to know that they thought about it. At least the philosophers did

 

 

And if the philosophers did, so too did the mathematicians. They were one and the same back in those days, and even if a predominantly mathematician disagreed with a predominantly philosopher, they were still well aware of each other's concepts.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Although Aristotle and Plate talk *about* infinity, neither *used* infinity in any of their calculations. There's a big difference between having a concept and knowing what to do with the concept. That's what makes this discovery textual find important--it looks as though the ancients actually used the concept of infinity to solve problems.