The Archimedes Codex

Reviel Netz

William Noel

Title: The Archimedes Codex – Revealing the Blueprint of Modern Science

Author: Reviel Netz and William Noel

Publisher: Phoenix 2008 (First published 2007)

ISBN: 978-0-7538-2372-9

Pages: 388

Joint authorship of books rarely elevate the title to commendable works unless one of them is a renowned scholar, who is otherwise tongue-tied before an audience who watches his every move with awe. In order not to make his readers disillusioned, he may opt for a ghost-writer or co-writer, who would be gifted in plucking the words straight from his heart to the readers even before he himself could barely had had the chance to utter them. The present book definitely doesn’t belong to this category, as both of them are little known outside their own circles – in fact, even inside the circle before they had the good fortune to handle the miracle which is the story of the book. Netz is Professor of Ancient Science at Stanford University, is a leading authority on Archimedes and editor of the Archimedes Palimpsest. Noel is the Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Walters Art Museum and Director of the Archimedes Palimpsest Project. Together, they unravel the tale of the palimpsest that came their way, and the heroic efforts – personal as well as scientific – which went behind decrypting it.

A palimpsest (parchment document which was prepared by scrubbing off earlier text) was put on auction in 1999 in the U.S. An anonymous buyer bought it, whose identity is not at all revealed in the text. It was in a pathetic condition and contained the works of Archimedes, considered to be the father of science. The mysterious buyer very kindly granted Noel to have the book in his museum and exhibit it. He also financed the efforts to decode it. The manuscript was in fact a prayer book compiled in 13^th century from parchment which contained Archimedes’ work. Not that the text was written by the legend himself, but was copied by a scribe in 10^th century. Noel’s team had the unenviable task of recreating the rubbed out text by non-destructive methods and analyse them. Cutting edge scientific breakthroughs were freely employed in the project – multiple spectral imaging, X-ray imaging, custom-made image processing and optical character recognition algorithms, with use being made of even the SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center). The work had not fully completed when the book was on print, but the path has become clear to travel smoothly thereafter.

Archimedes (287 – 212 BCE) is the father of science and engineering. What Galileo and Newton reignited in 17^th century Europe was the flame kindled by Archimedes in Greece in the 3^rd century BCE, but was extinguished by tempestuous middle ages. He founded statics and hydrodynamics, made great contributions to geometry and combinatorics. It may even be said that he knew mathematical infinity that later became a respectful branch of mathematics only in the 20^th century through the works of Georg Cantor. His calculational rigour is astonishing, when we realise that he had approximated p between 3-1/7 and 3-10/71. He was also a military engineer, whose contraptions put the invading Romans at bay during the second Punic War. Syracuse, his home state had the misfortune to ally with Carthage and invite the wrath of the powerful Roman empire. In spite of Archimedes’ work, the city fell through treachery and he was killed by a Roman soldier when he failed to answer his queries as Archimedes was in deep thought about a mathematical problem at hand. It is often said that the only Roman who had stepped into history of science is that soldier who killed Archimedes!

Archimedes’ treatises found circulation in Alexandria. The articles were in papyrus rolls as was the practice of the era. Eutocius converted the text to codex form in the 5^th century which was a new form of compiling information. This is the ‘book’ form which we are so familiar with. The vagaries of history saw the centre of learning shift from Alexandria to Constantinople and our codex went along with it. Scholars collected and copied classical texts, but as religion began to gain ascendancy in intellectual life, Archimedes was relegated to the backbenches, since the monks were interested only to read Homer, Plato and Euclid. Photius compiled all treatises of Archimedes into three codices, now classified A, B and C. The first two are, however, irretrievably lost, the third one forming the protagonist of the book. This contains Archimedes’ Method, that contains his geometric works, Stomachions (combinatorics which paved the way for the science of probability) and about his ideas on hydrodynamics. Papyrus went out of fashion in the 9^th and 10^th centuries and it was made in parchment during the last copying. The codex remained in Constantinople till 1229 when it was erased and a prayer book was made.

A fascinating bit of history is narrated to show the frightful times that were the middle ages and the upheavals which tossed the codex across the Mediterranean Sea. The fourth Crusade was a peculiar one. Doge of Venice demanded a large sum of money to transport the holy warriors to Egypt from where they were to fight their way to the Holy Land. To meet the expenses, Pope Innocent III approved the installation of a puppet king on the throne of Constantinople, which was under the religious guidance of Greek Orthodox church. The puppet agreed to pay for the transportation once he was in the Seat. However, even after coronation of Alexius Angelus, the money was not forthcoming. Crusaders lost patience, ransacked and pillaged the city. The Christian soldiers raped the nuns and defiled Patriarch’s palace. However, three things materialized as the Pope wished – cash went into the coffers of the Doge, Catholic faith was imposed on the Orthodox and the classics went up in flames.

Codex C was erased and converted to a prayer book in 1229, as indicated in the manuscript itself. Around 16^th century, after Constantinople fell to Muslim power, it was moved to a monastery in Palestine. By early 19^th century, it again travelled back to Constantinople, which had changed its name to Istanbul by then. It was housed in a monastery owned by Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. World War I provided further tribulations in the form of internal political tensions. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who dethroned the Ottoman Sultan hanged the Patriarch himself in a bid to free his country from religious overdoses. The manuscript travelled to Athens, from where it was possessed by a French military man, whose heirs auctioned it off in 1999.

The codex presents mathematical wonders not heretofore seen. Netz establishes the claim that even set theory and calculus are anticipated in the ancient writings. Archimedes assembled the toolkit for making modern science. The book is structured in a sandwich form, with Netz and Noel writing the alternate chapters. While Noel pours on the conservation methods, imaging and analysing infrastructure and how it came about, Netz is focussed on the contents – what to make of it and how it advances our knowledge of ancient wisdom. Archimedes was very fond of estimating the area of curvilinear forms through the use of strightline structures like rectangles and squares. Detailed explanations, accompanied by illustrations make the book very helpful. The delightful combination of history and mathematics is so appealing that the readers feel urged to finish it in one go. The colour plates compiled in two sections gives a good chance to see the codex in the original form when it arrived at the museum and the hectic efforts which went in to extract meaningful content from it.

Any way, the too detailed exposition on finding the area of a parabolic segment (p.147-154) creates the impression that it is interesting only to specific readers who follow the history of mathematics with deep attention. While there is no contending the fact that Archimedes played a great role in the development of mathematics and science, the authors’ assertion that “use of infinity as a precise mathematical tool allowed the great explosions of mathematical discoveries and therefore of scientific discoveries in the 19^th and 20^th centuries” (p.181) appear to be far fetched and assigning unwarranted credit to Archimedes. We must keep in mind that even if Archimedes was unknown, these discoveries would have taken place.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star