source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 07:30:05 -0800 Subject: Irrationals in Ancient Greece From: Manuel.Op.de.Coul@ezh.nl (Manuel Op de Coul) From: PAULE >>''The idea of irrational numbers was too >>repugnant to the ancient Greeks'' >This is simply a false statement. Pythagoreans were said to have known of >the irrationality of the square root of 2, in the 4th century BC They made a wide-scale attempt to prevent this fact from becoming known to the public. >the >''three big problems'' were solved by Menaechmus and Dinostratus with conic >sections and the quadratrix (a transcendental curve) Yes, and ingenious indeed, in that no irrational quantities were explicitly used in these constructons! >in the golden age of >Greek Mathematics (3rd century BC), all of the great figures (Archimedes, >Apollonius of Perga, Eratosthenes, Happarchus) used irrationals without >repugnance. What are Aristoxenus' dates? Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sat, 1 Mar 1997 17:08 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA01459; Sat, 1 Mar 1997 17:08:03 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA01335 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id IAA13923; Sat, 1 Mar 1997 08:06:20 -0800 Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 08:06:20 -0800 Message-Id: <009B09EB121C35A5.3A35@vbv40.ezh.nl> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu