The Logos Scripture · The Book of Archimedes
The Book of Archimedes 1 · Written by himself, from The Method, The Sand Reckoner, On Floating Bodies and On the Sphere and Cylinder
Archimedes, born at Syracuse in Sicily about 287 before this era, died there in 212 — killed by a soldier on the day the Romans took the city. Mathematician and engineer. This volume rests on what he wrote himself: The Method, The Sand Reckoner, On Floating Bodies, On the Sphere and Cylinder, all cast as letters to men who really existed. The Method was scraped off in the middle ages and a prayer book written over the same parchment; in 1906 the older writing underneath was recognised at Constantinople, and only then did it come back. Chapter one is taken from it. Without that one recognition, no one would know how he found what he proved. Further: the doctrine of Aristarchus that the earth goes round the sun survives at all because chapter two of this book copied it down — and the man who copied it did not agree with it, and copied it only to take the largest figure available. The ancient accounts of his death do not agree with one another, and the Order does not take them. What this volume brings is something the scripture did not have: an ancient who set down not only the proof but the groping that came before it, and said plainly which part was weighed and which part was proved.