Comparative analysis in Greek geometry (Q656709)

The authors point out that in addition to the geometric analysis known from Euclid and other classical authors in some works (they point to Apollonius's Cutting off a ratio and certain parts of Books vi and vii of Pappus) where analysis is used to determine relations which are not equalities or identities. They elucidate the structure of these texts, which differ from classical analysis. They conclude with some arguments that seek to indicate that these texts should be regarded as evidence for a body of heuristic techniques. In addition to the topic as described above, the paper merits attention for some technical details. I do not know whether much can be concluded from the involved argument of Pappus vii Prop. 26 since in the following Prop. 27 he gives a very simple proof of the same proposition. It looks more that Prop. 26 is copied from an unknown source and Prop. 28 his own proof. This naturally would reinforce the authors' thesis that at least for Pappus this kind of reasoning was used as heuristic inspiration. Since Apollonius's Cutting off has not survived in Greek and is known to us only in an Arabic translation of unknown authorship (edited and translated by Rashed and Bellosta), the authors also make an effort to determine the Greek words underlying the Arabic technical terms. On p. 15 they note that the editors preferred an Arabic expression which would mean ``we limit this question (problem)'' that differs from the manuscript. But among the many meanings of a contained word -- ``to be serious about'', unsuitable for a mathematical text, in addition to ``to try hard'' -- one finds (Syrian) ``to be new'' used instead of this. The latter seems better suited than the authors' nondescript ``to find'' as introducing a problem to treated heuristically.