The philosophical and mathematical commentaries of Proclus on the first book of
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 599 passages
Cite this work
- APAProclus. (n.d.). The philosophical and mathematical commentaries of Proclus on the first book of. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/proclus/the-philosophical-and-mathematical-commentaries-of-proclus-on-the-first-book-of
- MLAProclus. "The philosophical and mathematical commentaries of Proclus on the first book of." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/proclus/the-philosophical-and-mathematical-commentaries-of-proclus-on-the-first-book-of.
- ChicagoProclus. The philosophical and mathematical commentaries of Proclus on the first book of. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/proclus/the-philosophical-and-mathematical-commentaries-of-proclus-on-the-first-book-of.
What it is about
Proclus's commentary on the first book of Euclid's 'Elements': at once a philosophy of mathematics and the main source we have for the history of Greek geometry.
Context and history
Proclus wrote it in the fifth century, eight hundred years after Euclid, and its value is twofold. As philosophy, it defends a position still argued over: mathematical objects are neither things in the world nor conventions, but exist in the imagination as the projection of reasons the soul already holds. As a document, it contains the 'catalogue of geometers', a summary of the history of geometry before Euclid derived from a lost work of Eudemus, and this is nearly all we know about the beginnings of Greek mathematics. Without these pages, Thales and Pythagoras as mathematicians would be even dimmer than they are. The translation is Thomas Taylor's, of 1788.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Mr. _T. TAYLOR_, the Platonic Philosopher and _the modern Plethon_, consonant to that philosophy, professes Polytheism.[1] The Reader is requested to correct the following Errors. Page 4. of the Dissertation, Vol. I. line 8. for _admitted_, read _omitted_. Page 16. line 8. for _from_, read _form_. Page 51. Vol. I. of the Commentaries, line 16. instead of _They are surely not the_, &c. read _For surely it cannot be said that there are_, &c. Line 17. for _but we_, read _but that we_. And line 19. for _is by much prior to_, read _is by a much greater priority_. Vol. II. page 18. line 26. for _and one is_, read _and one part is_. And line 27. for _another_, read _the other_. Page 114. line 13. for _The angle_, read _Let the angle_; and instead of _is bisected_, in the same line, read _be bisected_. Page 411. line 2. for _is filled with intellect_, read _fills intellect_. And line 3. for _it also participates_, read _also it participates_. TO THE SAC