The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics

This book was conceived in Tel Aviv University and written in the University of Cambridge. I enjoyed the difference between the two, and am grateful to both.

The question one is most often asked about Greek mathematics is: ‘Is there anything left to say?’ Indeed, much has been written. In the late nineteenth century, great scholars did a stupendous work in editing the texts and setting up the basic historical and mathematical framework. But although the materials for a historical understanding were there, almost all the interpretations of Greek mathematics offered before about 1975 were either wildly speculative or ahistorical. In the last two decades or so, the material has finally come to life. A small but highly productive international community of scholars has set up new standards of precision. The study of Greek mathematics today can be rigorous as well as exciting. I will not name here the individual scholars to whom I am indebted. But I can – I hope – name this small community of scholars as a third institution to which I belong, just as I belong to Tel Aviv and to Cambridge. Again I can only express my gratitude.

So I have had many teachers. Some were mathematicians, most were not. I am not a mathematician, and this book demands no knowledge of mathematics (and only rarely does it demand some knowledge of Greek). Readers may feel I do not stress sufficiently the value of Greek mathematics in terms of mathematical content.