Mathematical modeling in Plato between Thales and Euclid (Q1712003)

The aim of this book is a very ambitious one: to find out how and when Greek mathematics underwent the transformations that turned it from what we think was a more concrete and special-case oriented science to the abstract, general, and deductive version encountered in Euclid's \textit{Elements}. Given the absence of any extant mathematical works preceding Euclid's \textit{Elements} that might enlighten us about the gradual changes in style and substance, the only source for such a study, Plato's dialogues and later references to Plato, are given very ample attention. In that sense, this is an ample study of Plato's place and that of his Academy in the development of Greek mathematics, one that is extraordinarily well informed of the work of all scholars writing on early Greek mathematics. Its bibliography is more than 30 pages long. The new element in the analysis of Plato's position regarding mathematics come from what the author refers to as ``mathematical models'', a term derived from C. S. Peirce's \textit{icons}. In the context of Euclidean mathematics, these are the diagrams. In Plato's case they might be geometric diagrams, but also models in a much broader sense, such as models modeling the universe, both as a totality and as its constituting elements, or models modeling the function of mathematics in the education of the guardians of his Republic. The passages studied are: (1) the geometric example regarding the doubling of the square in \textit{Meno}, (2) the mathematical passage in \textit{Theaetetus} (147C--148D), (3) the duplication of the cube and Plato's role in it (it is found that the mechanical construction of the two middle proportionals attributed to Plato by Eutocius very likely does go back to Plato, and that the fact that Plato criticized in no uncertain terms the attempted solutions of Archytas, Eudoxus, and Menaechmus for being ``mechanical'' refers not to their later solutions, that have reached us, but to first attempts, and that he regarded his own solution not as a solution in the mathematical sense but as ``heuristics''), (3) the analogy of the divided line from the \textit{Republic} (509d--511e), and (4) many passages in the \textit{Timaeus}. While several scholars consider the importance attributed to Plato in late antiquity to the development of Greek mathematics to be an aspect of a general tendency of later centuries of attributing great accomplishments to very few figures of the past, such as to Pythagoras or to Plato, the author's analysis leads him to state unequivocally that ``we must attribute the discovery of mathematics of the Euclidean type to Plato.''