True or false?
Eight hundred years ago, a monk did his best to erase a copy of some of Archimedes’ most important work, putting some prayers on the parchment instead, and the words of the great Greek mathematician were then gone forever.
False.
At Stanford University in California, some scientists are using X-ray technology to make the older ink shine through the later scribbling, thereby recovering a remarkable piece of history and doing something else to boot. They are giving us an illustration among many of how a civilization made great in part by the Greeks of antiquityremains great to this day, and is worthy not only of preservation, but of an appreciative shout — “Eureka!”
“Eureka” — meaning, “I have found it” — is what Archimedes (287 BC-212 BC) supposedly yelped as he ran naked through the streets of Syracuse. The discovery of the moment, made as he lowered his body into a tub for a bath, was that the water displaced was proportionate to the substance put into it, a principle of unending practical and theoretical value.
Known as the founder of integral calculus and mathematical physics, Archimedes is considered one of the two or three greatest mathematicians ever. We are told he discovered pi and a new way to find square roots.
He developed a numerical system to facilitate calculations in large numbers. He was the inventor of the water screw to raise water and helped win battles through his invention of such weapons as a catapult that could fling 500-pound rocks at the enemy. With levers and pulleys of his contrivance, he could yank ships out of water, and he reputedly once said he could move the Earth if given a place to stand.
The Greek contribution to the best of Western civilization is very nearly incalculable, not just in math and the sciences, as exemplified in the work of Archimedes, but in moral philosophy and political thought, in ideas of how we should go about living our lives rationally.
We’ve all studied the other major influences — the ancient Hebrews, the Romans, parts of the high Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, modernity.
From all of this and more, we have evolved free, open societies governed by the rule of law, widespread health and longevity unimaginable in previous epochs, systems of education available to everyone, opportunities of every possible kind and a technology very nearly miraculous in its reach.
Other civilizations have obviously had their day in the sun, including that of Middle East Muslims, whose accomplishments were once writ large.
But as the scholar Bernard Lewis has written, something went wrong, something brought this civilization to a standstill, made it into something dark and dreary compared to the sunshine in the West.
From this fact has come fierce resentment and young men looking for a meaning they cannot find in dry-bones, autocratic, impoverished lands.
From this has come the suicidal terrorism of the true, fascistic believer.
Meanwhile, our civilization, while veering down many wrong paths, has veered up many right paths, as is shown in one small way by the use of a hair-sized X-ray beam that may help to disclose Archimedes’ thoughts on flotation, gravity and other issues. There’s a lesson here about something that comes to us from distances both long and short in time and space and that we may take for granted, but is presently under serious challenge.
What we must do is move this challenge to inconsequentiality. To do that, we must stand on deep respect for the best in our heritage and a determination to preserve it and fight for it as necessary.
Examiner columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies.
