This volume of essays is dedicated to Wilbur Knorr (1945–1997), an outstanding historian of science whose career was cut short much too early. Inspired by Knorr's work, this volume concentrates on the history of ancient mathematics, the associated mathematical sciences, and their medieval and modern tradition.
This volume emulates the quality and diverse interests of Knorr's innovative, exact, and far-reaching research. Topics inspired by Knorr include a study of geometric analysis and synthesis in ancient Greece and medieval Islam; examination of Eudoxus as originator for the ideas of proportionality underlying Book V of “Euclid's Elements”; and the extent that Renaissance theorists of linear perspective had access to ancient sources. This book considers the status of Eudoxus's theory of homocentric spheres in Greek astronomy and the examination of the status of in Greek mathematics. A detailed discussion of the geometrical chemistry of Plato's “Timaeus” and its interpretation in antiquity stems from Knorr's work, and a study of Plato's concept of numbers and its relation to the Theory of Forms. Knorr's varied interests motivate investigation into the representation of numbers in the Latin middle ages, or why we read Arabic numbers backwards, and the history of science in a chronology of the three dynasties in ancient China.
Patrick Suppes(1922–2014) was Lucie Stern Professor Emeritus
at CSLI, Stanford University. Julius
Moravcsik (1931–2009) was professor of philosophy at
Stanford University. Henry Mendell is professor of philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles.
Errata
- Preface
Patrick Suppes, Julius M. Moravcsik & Henry Mendell
- The Role and Development of Geometric Analysis and Synthesis in Ancient Greece and Medieval Islam
J. L. Berggren & Glen Van Brummelen
- Eudoxus: Parapegmata and Proportionality
David Fowler
- Pappus' Notes to Euclid's Optics
Alexander Jones
- The Trouble with Eudoxus
Henry Mendell
- Why Did Greek Mathematicians Publish Their Analyses?
Reviel Netz
- Plato's Geometrical Chemistry and Its Exgesis in Antiquity
Ian Mueller
- Plato on Numbers and Mathematics
Julius M. Moracsik
- Why We Read Arabic Numerals Backwards
Charles Burnett
- The Chronology of the Three Dynasties
David S. Nivison
1/1/2001