Abstract
Book 7 of the Collection is a companion to several geometrical treatises, which by Pappus’s time were alotted to a special branch of mathematics, the άναλνόμενος τόπος, or ‘Domain of Analysis’.162 These books were supposed to equip the geometer with a “special resource” enabling him to solve geometrical problems. More precisely, they were to help him in a particular kind of mathematical argument called ‘analysis’. The nature of Greek geometrical analysis has been the subject of an enormous philosophical and metamathematical literature, to which I am reluctant to add.163 The following remarks are meant only as a description of analysis as it actually occurs in Pappus and other ancient texts, and to show the application of the “Domain of Analysis” to it.
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© 1986 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Jones, A. (1986). Introduction to Book 7. In: Jones, A. (eds) Pappus of Alexandria Book 7 of the Collection. Sources in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences, vol 8. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4908-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4908-5_2
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