The Impact of Archimedes on Medieval Science

Abstract

THE importance of the role played by Archimedes in the history of science can scarcely be exaggerated. He was emulated and admired in his own day and at successive periods in later times. His name appears on the pages of the works of the great figures who fashioned the beginnings of modern mechanics. For example, Galileo owed a not inconsiderable debt to Archimedes -both direct and indirect. Galileo mentions Archimedes by actual count over one hundred times and in almost Homeric hyperbole, using such expressions as suprahumanus Archimedes, inimitabilis Archimedes, divinissimus Archimedes, and so on. Archimedes' significance for these founders of early modern science lay in the use of mathematics in the treatment of physical problems, as well as in the originality and fertility of his mathematical techniques. But all of this is well known. Perhaps less well known is the role played by Archimedes in the middle ages. The problem of the medieval Archimedes is a classic one in the transmission of Greek learning. In some ways it has an advantage for study over other similar problems of transmission, since one is not overwhelmed by the abundance of materials as in the case of Euclid, or even more so in the case of Aristotle. That is to say, one has hopes both of defining the limits of the investigation and of presenting a substantially complete solution of the problem. The basic problem of the impact of Archimedes on medieval science can be subdivided into three questions: (1) How much of the corpus of Archimedes' writings in their actual form -or some closely modified state -came directly into Latin? (2) How much of Archimedes' methods and results was made available by translations from the Arabic or Greek of works which were influenced (but not so directly) by Archimedes? (3) What use was made by medieval authors of the works and ideas available in Latin translation? While I am preparing in detailed fashion the answers to these questions in a work, Archimedes in the Middle Ages, I think it possible in short compass to give the highlights of the answers as I conceive them. Before answering the questions, two short observations ought to be made. The first concerns the temporal limits of the problem the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. The latter terminus is arbitrary, the former is set by the state of