• DOI:10.1515/APEIRON.2004.37.4.29
• Corpus ID: 170916259

Hero of Alexandria's Mechanical Geometry

@article{Tybjerg2004HeroOA,
  title={Hero of Alexandria's Mechanical Geometry},
  author={Karin Tybjerg},
  journal={Apeiron},
  year={2004},
  volume={37},
  pages={29 - 56}
}

• K. Tybjerg
• Published 2004
• Mathematics
• Apeiron

Greek mathematics is often identified with the achievements of a rather select group of Hellenistic authors, most notably Euclid, Archimedes and Apollonius. In these authors we find a highly sophisticated form of mathematics and fully developed practices of deductive demonstration and it is the works of these authors and their predecessors that have received the majority of attention in the scholarship. Other forms of mathematics, such as the mathematics employed by professionals or practitioners working with land-measurement, trade, architecture or administration, have also received some measure of interest, and it has become clear that Greek mathematics covers a plurality of practices. The methods employed by these practitioners, often based on numerical calculations and approximations, have, however, often been sidelined as 'applied' or even 'lower' forms of mathematics. These two categories of mathematics provide a strangely polarized picture of mathematical practices, a picture that does not accurately portray the mathematical landscape of antiquity. Although the dichotomy is still alive and well, some doubt has already been cast over the possibility of a strict division between high-level and low-level practices, or between theoretical and applied mathematics. Reviel Netz has gestured at a 'material' element in the manipulations of Euclidean-Archimedean geometrical diagrams, which are, for instance, 'constructed' and 'cut' in real space. In the case of professional mathematicians, Jens