Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science
- Other Volumes in the Series of Cambridge Companions
- The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Presocratic Natural Philosophy
- 2 Reason, Experience, and Art: The Gorgias and On Ancient Medicine
- 3 Towards a Science of Life: The Cosmological Method, Teleology, and Living Things
- 4 Aristotle on the Matter for Birth, Life, and the Elements
- 5 From Craft to Nature: The Emergence of Natural Teleology
- 6 Creationism in Antiquity
- 7 What’s a Plant?
- 8 Meteorology
- 9 Ancient Greek Mathematics
- 10 Astronomy in Its Contexts
- 11 Ancient Greek Mechanics and the Mechanical Hypothesis
- 12 Measuring Musical Beauty: Instruments, Reason, and Perception in Ancient Harmonics
- 13 Ancient Greek Historiography of Science
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
- Other Volumes in the Series of Cambridge Companions (continued from page ii)
9 - Ancient Greek Mathematics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2020
- The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science
- Other Volumes in the Series of Cambridge Companions
- The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Presocratic Natural Philosophy
- 2 Reason, Experience, and Art: The Gorgias and On Ancient Medicine
- 3 Towards a Science of Life: The Cosmological Method, Teleology, and Living Things
- 4 Aristotle on the Matter for Birth, Life, and the Elements
- 5 From Craft to Nature: The Emergence of Natural Teleology
- 6 Creationism in Antiquity
- 7 What’s a Plant?
- 8 Meteorology
- 9 Ancient Greek Mathematics
- 10 Astronomy in Its Contexts
- 11 Ancient Greek Mechanics and the Mechanical Hypothesis
- 12 Measuring Musical Beauty: Instruments, Reason, and Perception in Ancient Harmonics
- 13 Ancient Greek Historiography of Science
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
- Other Volumes in the Series of Cambridge Companions (continued from page ii)
Summary
This chapter is addressed to those who wish to read the original sources of Greco-Roman mathematics, either in the original languages or in modern translations. Hence, it focuses on the kinds of mathematics that was disseminated in treatises written by scholars who were members of a relatively small literary elite. This theoretical style of mathematics was not the only kind of mathematics practised in Greco-Roman antiquity, and, indeed, the total number authors of philosophical mathematics must have been dwarfed by the number of individuals who used practical mathematics in their daily work, and who passed on such mathematical skills to their sons, disciples, and apprentices. Nevertheless, the literary works produced by this self-selected group of individuals have elicited the admiration and study of mathematical scholars through the centuries, and have justly been regarded as one of the most important products of ancient scholarship.
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- The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science , pp. 185 - 207Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
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