Center for the Study of Language and Information Publication Lecture Notes

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Ancient and Medieval Traditions in the Exact Sciences

by Patrick Suppes, J.M. Moravcsik, and Henry Mendell

Published 1 January 2001

This volume of essays is dedicated to the late Wilbur Knorr, a historian of science. Inspired by Knorr's work, the essays concentrate on the history of ancient mathematics, the associated mathematical sciences and their medieval and modern traditions. Topics include: a study of geometric analysis and sythesis in ancient Greece and medieval Islam; an examination of Eudoxus as originator for the ideas of proportionality underlying Book V of "Euclid's Elements"; the extent that Renaissance theorists of linear perspective had access to ancient sources; a discussion of the geometrical chemistry of Plato's "Timaeus" and its interpretation in antiquity, as well as a study of Plato's concept of numbers and its relation to the Theory of Forms; and the history of science in a chronology of three dynasties in China.