Showing posts with label Euclid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Euclid. Show all posts

Monday, June 4, 2007

Papus' Treasury of Analysis and the Lost Books

According to Carl Apollonius.
Boyer's A History of Mathematics, Papus' Treasury of Analysis listed treatises by Aristaeus, Euclid, Eratosthenes,and
Conics had 487 theorems ...so the last (eigth) lost book had 105 theorems currently missing ... Cutting of a Ratio, On Means, and Porisms are all missing ... just think if we they weren't lost ... we might have already had a settlement on Mars ... maybe ... maybe not ... you never know

I am particularly intrigued by Porisms ... aren't you?

Monday, May 21, 2007

Felix Klein on Euclid

Reading Felix Klein ... he says of mathematics during the Euclid Era "Several facts have become known only quite recently in this direction. Thus it is now known that the books that have come to us from the time of Euclid constitute only a very small part of what was then in existence;"

Clearly this begs the issue of missing manuscripts ... he talks about Zeuthen and Allman as possibly having some insight into the issue .... IS there a "Black Swan" here?

Probably all missing manuscripts have an aspect of inherent 'Black Swanism" ...