Now I know why I had so much trouble with mathematics in high school.
This guy, Archemedes, lived in the 3rd century BC and wrote this book or parchment manuscript on math. After the Romans took over Syracuse and killed Archimedes, the manuscript got lost for two thousand years, making in that period only rare and unscheduled appearances. Evidently, in the 12th century, some monks got hold of it, did their best to erase Archimedes, and painted a prayer book over his Greek characters. A painting over another painting is called a palimpsest, and so we get The Archimedes Palimpsest, which I suggest is a great title for a Hollywood movie.
Of course I'd heard of Archimedes. Everybody has heard the name. He's the Greek who noticed that when he got into a bath tub, his body displaced an equal amount of water. Upon realizing this, he shouted, "Eureka", and ran naked through the Syracusian streets. In Greek, "eureka" means "I found it," and it is, aptly enough, the state motto of California.
Archimedes did much more than that. It's only now, that a filthy copy of the half-obscured palimpsest was discovered in somebody's living room in Paris and sold for half a million dollars, that we're beginning to appreciate more of what he did. The invention of calculus is attributed to both Descartes and Leibnitz, independently, but we can now see that Archimedes laid the foundation for that foul enterprise. Well, maybe not that bad. Calculus, like a lot of Greek math, engages both the right and left cerebral hemispheres because you get to do math linearly and then draw a figure out of your results. My brief exposure to it was enough to illuminate the fact that I didn't really want to get into it any farther, although the curves and circles were rather neat.
But, my distaste notwithstanding, Archimedes was no doubt a genius. I applaud the man. As a documentary, this is enlightening but may be a strenuous jog for some of us. At times it seems to take longer to restore the effaced text than it took to write it, even with the new technology available to us. We get to see that technology at work and also hear comments from a dozen expert talking heads who love their demanding jobs to a point at which actually doing them excites them.
It really was interesting. But I'm happy they didn't get any deeper into mathematics. They wound up talking about how Archimedes began dabbling in infinity and that was far enough for me.
This guy, Archemedes, lived in the 3rd century BC and wrote this book or parchment manuscript on math. After the Romans took over Syracuse and killed Archimedes, the manuscript got lost for two thousand years, making in that period only rare and unscheduled appearances. Evidently, in the 12th century, some monks got hold of it, did their best to erase Archimedes, and painted a prayer book over his Greek characters. A painting over another painting is called a palimpsest, and so we get The Archimedes Palimpsest, which I suggest is a great title for a Hollywood movie.
Of course I'd heard of Archimedes. Everybody has heard the name. He's the Greek who noticed that when he got into a bath tub, his body displaced an equal amount of water. Upon realizing this, he shouted, "Eureka", and ran naked through the Syracusian streets. In Greek, "eureka" means "I found it," and it is, aptly enough, the state motto of California.
Archimedes did much more than that. It's only now, that a filthy copy of the half-obscured palimpsest was discovered in somebody's living room in Paris and sold for half a million dollars, that we're beginning to appreciate more of what he did. The invention of calculus is attributed to both Descartes and Leibnitz, independently, but we can now see that Archimedes laid the foundation for that foul enterprise. Well, maybe not that bad. Calculus, like a lot of Greek math, engages both the right and left cerebral hemispheres because you get to do math linearly and then draw a figure out of your results. My brief exposure to it was enough to illuminate the fact that I didn't really want to get into it any farther, although the curves and circles were rather neat.
But, my distaste notwithstanding, Archimedes was no doubt a genius. I applaud the man. As a documentary, this is enlightening but may be a strenuous jog for some of us. At times it seems to take longer to restore the effaced text than it took to write it, even with the new technology available to us. We get to see that technology at work and also hear comments from a dozen expert talking heads who love their demanding jobs to a point at which actually doing them excites them.
It really was interesting. But I'm happy they didn't get any deeper into mathematics. They wound up talking about how Archimedes began dabbling in infinity and that was far enough for me.
