Mathematical education in Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Pappus, Theon, Hypatia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33910/2687-1262-2021-3-2-112-119Keywords:
deductive reasoning, truth, exact sciences in antiquity, rise and decline of educationAbstract
Philosophy and mathematics go hand by hand from at least the time of Plato. Despite differences in their subject matter, they share their strife for truth and attitude towards deductive reasoning. The paper aims to highlight these points and demonstrate the changes mathematical education underwent in its birthplace, the Egyptian Alexandria, in Late Antiquity, the changes which affected both its content and the way of presentation, influenced by the Neoplatonic method of commentary. The figures discussed in the paper — the mathematicians of the fourth century Pappus, Theon and Hypatia — both actively participated in the process of commenting on the classical works of Euclid, Apollonius, Ptolemy, Aratus, and Diophantus and made their own, although minor and mostly methodological, contributions to arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and harmonics. The points are further illustrated by a selection of fragments from the Neoplatonic Damascius, who in his lost Philosophical history presents us with the whole gallery of philosophical portraits in Athens, Alexandria and elsewhere, such as mysterious and ascetic Isidore, pragmatic Asclepiadotus and Hegias, sober and diligent Marinus, the successor of Proclus, who, unlike his teacher, in his exegeses of the Parmenides thought that the dialogue deals with species rather than gods.
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