On the need to rewrite the history of Greek mathematics (Q1225033): Difference between revisions

In this historiographic study, the author argues that the traditional way of writing the history of ancient Greek mathematics in both distorting and be-clouding. Mathematics, though admittedly less prone to the vagaries of time than other theoretical (but less abstract) systems, is nevertheless a reflection of culture and not at all immune to the idiosyncratic features of the particular civilization in which it grows. This is why there is a Greek mathematics, which is in many significant respects unlike Babylonian mathematics, or Egyptian mathematics, or Chinese mathematics, or Islamic mathematics, or post-Renaissance Western mathematics. By methodological tack which either neglects ab initio the peculiar specificities of a given mathematical culture or results on the long run in such a neglect, as a consequence of explicitly stated or implicitly taken for granted assumptions, is by definition ahistorical and should be refused recognition by the community of historians, who, after all, make their living by discussing and interpreting (as Aristotle already knew) not the Nomothetic but the Idiosyncratic. The bete noire of the author's historical wrath is one of the crucial concepts in the interpretation of Greek mathematical texts, namely the concept of ''geometric algebra.'' According to this concept, large parts of Greek geometry are nothing but algebra in disguise. lt behooves, then, the historian of mathematics to remove the disguise and show both Hellenic and Hellenistic mathematics in their stark nakedness for what they truly are, by transcribing the awkwardly (i.e., geometrically) expressed algebraic truths into the language of modern algebraic symbolism. Nothing essential is lost in this transcription. On the contrary, only the superficial make-up is removed and the authentic features of the Lady's countenance are thereby revealed. This is an ahistorical procedure whose only raison d'être is the modern mathematician's ability to perform the translation of geometrical propositions into algebraic equations; it stems from his conviction that ''...mathematics is a scientia universalis'', an algebra of thought containing universal ways of inference, everlasting structures, and timeless, ideal patterns of investigation which can be identified through-out the history of civilized man and which are completely independent of the form in which they happen to appear at a particular juncture in time'' (p. 75). Such a conviction, the author thinks, is totally unwarranted. It arbitrarily exempts mathematics from any genuine historical change, it effectively re-moves it from the historical landscape, and it substitutes for the intricately complex historical process overly simplified logical criteria of change. It necessarily results in a diminution of the history of mathematics as a historical discipline. Form and content are not independent in mathematics. They never are. The way one says things (in mathematics, like in any other domain) imposes definite limits on what one can say. Before in invention of analytical geometry, geometry is not algebra. Greek mathematics is not camouflaged algebra. It is essentially Greek geometry. The Greeks did not hide their algebraic line of reasoning behind the clumsy screen of geometrical expression. There is nothing lurking in hiding in the background of Greek geometry. When a culture cannot say something it remains silent. ''Part of being ignorant of something is being ignorant of your ignorance. If you know that you are ignorant, your ignorance stricto sensu has disappeared. And the Greeks, clearly, did not know that they did not know algebra. So they did not hide their ignorance behind a geometrical screen'' (p. 107, n. 122). There is not one trace of authentic algebraic equations is classical Greek geometry. Since there are substantive differences between the geometric and the algebraic way of reasoning, introducing algebraic symbols and manipulations into Greek mathematics, transcribing geometrical propositions by means of algebraic equations, reverting to algebraic notations and transformations when-ever the Greek way of doing things seems ''awkward'' and ''cumbersome'' to the modern mathematician amounts to historical fraud in the exegesis of Greek mathematics and should, therefore, be avoided at any price. It is impossible for modern man to think like an ancient Greek. Historical understanding involves, however, the attempt at faithful reconstruction of the past. In intellectual history this necessarily means the avoidance of conceptual pit-falls and interpretive anachronisms. Though it is impossible to think like Euclid, it is rather easy to think obtrusively, impudently and disrespect-fully unlike him. We cannot know what went through Euclid's mind when he wrote the ''Elements''. But we are on much safer ground when we try to decide what Euclid could not have thought when he compiled his great work. He most likely did not use things for which there is not shred of genuine evidence either in his time or in the works of his predecessors. This much is safe to conclude. Furthermore, he clearly could not have foreseen what mathematicians and historians of mathematics were going to do on the long run to his ''Elements''; he could not have used mathematical devices and procedures which were invented hundreds and hundreds of years after his death. This much is obvious too. To sum up, then: We cannot think like Euclid. But we should strive with all our might (if it is history that we are interested in) to avoid thinking unlike him when elucidating and commenting on his writings. One way of thinking unlike Euclid is to use the algebraic approach in interpreting his works. In the second part of his paper, the author displays the historical untenability of the standard interpretation of Greek mathematics, by means of a close analysis of a number of propositions from the Elements. It is shown that complicated propositions become trivial when transcribed into algebraic symbolism, some cease altogether to the propositions, others lead to different conclusions than Euclid's, still others repeat results already obtained in previous propositions, while in one case, a string of three consecutive propositions from Book X turns out to prove thrice exactly the same thing! The conclusion is clear: Euclid's train of thought was not algebraic but geometric. Greek mathematics must be understood in its own right. This can be done by refusing to apply to its analysis foreign, anachronistic criteria. The only acceptable meta-language for a historically sympathetic investigation and comprehension of Greek mathematics seems to be ordinary language, not algebra.