CHAPTER 3

THE BEGINNINGS
OF
GREEK
MATHEMATICS
 THE BEGINNING OF GREEK
MATHEMATICS

The Geometrical The Dawn Of

Discoveries Of Thales: Demonstrative
Greece And Geometry:
The Aegean Area Thales Of Miletos
 The Geometrical
Discoveries Of Thales:
Greece And
The Aegean Area
 The Greeks made Mathematics into one
discipline, transforming a varied collection of
empirical rules of calculation into an orderly
and systematic unity.

 Although they were plainly heirs to an

accumulation of Eastern knowledge, the
GREEKS fashioned through their own efforts
a mathematics more profound, more abstract
and more rational than any that preceded it.
 In ancient Babylonia and Egypt, mathematics had
been cultivated chiefly as a tool, befitting a privileged
class of scribes. Greek mathematics, on the other
hand, seems to have been a detached intellectual
subject for connoisseur.
 “ Let no man
ignorant of geometry
entry here ”

- Plato
All history is based on written
documents. Although
documentation concerning Egyptian
and Babylonian mathematics is often
very precise, the primary source that
can give us a clear picture of the
early development of Greek
mathematics are MEAGER.
 EGYPT BABYLON
(PAPYRUS) IA
(CLAY)
 THE SOURCES OF
GREEK MATHEMATICS

BYZANTINE
ARABIC
GREEK CODICES
TRANSLATIONS
(manuscript books)
BYZANTINE GREEK CODICES
(manuscript books) written
500-1500 years after the Greek
works were composed.

BYZANTINE LITERATURE is
the Greek literature of
the Middle Ages, whether
written in the territory of
the Byzantine Empire or
outside its borders. It forms
the second period in the
history of Greek literature
after Ancient Greek Literature.
TRANSMISSION OF THE GREEK
CLASSICS TO LATIN WESTERN
EUROPE  DURING THE MIDDLE
AGES
was a key factor in the 
development of intellectual life
 in Western Europe. Interest in
Greek texts and their availability
was scarce in the Latin West
during the earlier Middle Ages,
but as traffic to the East
increased so did Western
scholarship.
Located in the continent of Europe, Greece
 
covers 130,647 square kilometers of land
and 1,310 square kilometers of water,
making it the 97th largest nation in the
world with a total area of 131,957 square
kilometers
Greece became an independent state in
1829, after gaining its sovereignty from
Turkey.

The currency of Greece is the Euro (EUR).

As well, the people of Greece are referred
to as Greek.
 The wave of colonization that took place outside the Aegean
from the 8th to 6th century B.C. paved the way for an
extraordinary breakthrough of reason and the attendant
cultural advancement. Historians have called this phenomenon
the GREEK MIRACLE.

 The term Greek Awakening (or "Greek Miracle") denotes a

body of extraordinary innovations realized by ancient Greek
civilization. Some of these innovations were unique to ancient
Greece; that is, they never emerged in any other place or time
(and thus other cultures only acquired them via transmission
from ancient Greece). The key prerequisite to these innovations
was humanism. Humanism is "an outlook that emphasizes
human capabilities and concerns
“ When all the inventions had been
discovered, the sciences which are
not concerned with the pleasure
and necessities in life were
developed first in the lands were
men began to have leisure. This is
the reason why mathematics
originated in EGYPT, for there the
priestly class was able to enjoy
leisure”

- ARISTOTLE
(Metaphysics)
 The Dawn Of
Demonstrative
Geometry:
Thales Of Miletos
The rise of Greek mathematics
coincides in the time with the
general flowering of Greek
civilization in the 6th century
B.C.

“GREEK CIVILIZATION”
usually indicates a culture
beginning in the Iron Age and
flourishing most brilliantly in
the 5th and 4th centuries B.C.
 THE INDIVIDUALS WITH WHOM SPECIFIC
MATHEMATICAL DISCOVERIES ARE:

THALES OF MILETUS Pythagoras of Samos

(circa 625-547 B.C.) (circa 580- 500 B.C.)
 Thales of Miletus
BORN: Greek city of Miletus (on
the Ionian coast of
modern-day Turkey) in
about 624 or 625 B.C.
DIED : 548- 545 BC (aged c. 78)
FATHER: Examyes
MOTHER: Cleobuline
MAIN Ethics
INTEREST: Metaphysics
Mathematics
Astronomy
 He seems to have spent his early years in engaged
in commercial ventures, and it is said that in his
travels he learned GEOMETRY from the
Egyptians, and ASTRONOMY from the
Babylonians.

 To his admiring countrymen of later generation,

Thales was known as the first of the Seven Sages
of Greece, the only mathematician so honored.
 An angle The base
inscribed angles of an
inside a isosceles
semicircle is triangle are
A circle is The sides of equal
a right angle similar
bisected
by its triangles are
If two proportional
diameter.
straight lines
intersect, the
opposite
angles are
equal.

Thales must be credited with the following geometric

proportions:
  An angle inscribed inside a semicircle is a right angle.

PROOF: 
The intercepted arc for an angle
inscribed in a semi-circle is 180
degrees. Therefore the measure
of the angle must be half of
180, or 90 degrees. In other
words, the angle is a right
angle.
  A circle is bisected by its diameter.
Let AB be a diameter of a circle whose center is
at O.

By definition of diameter, AB passes through O.

∠AOB≅∠BOA because they are both straight
angles.

Thus, the arcs are congruent by 

Equal Angles in Equal Circles:
AB≅BA
Hence, a circle is split into two equal arcs by a 
diameter.
  If two straight lines intersect, the opposite angles are equal.
Given two lines AB and CD intersect
each other at the point O.
To prove: ∠1 = ∠3 and ∠2 = ∠4
PROOF:
From the figure, ∠1 + ∠2 = 180° 
[Linear pair]  → (1)
∠2 + ∠3 = 180° 
[Linear pair]  → (2)
From (1) and (2), we get
∠1 + ∠2 = ∠2 + ∠3
∴ ∠1 = ∠3
Similarly, we can prove ∠2 = ∠4 also
  The sides of similar triangles are proportional.
EXAMPLE:
ΔUVW∼ΔXYZ . If UV=3,VW=4,UW=5  and  XY=12 ,
find XZ and YZ

Write out the proportion. Make sure you

have the corresponding sides right.
= =
The scale factor here is =  .
Solving these equations gives XZ=20
 and YZ=16 .

The concepts of similarity and scale factor can be extended

to other figures besides triangles.
  The base angles of an isosceles triangle are equal.

An ISOSCELES TRIANGLE is a
triangle that has at least two
congruent sides. The congruent
sides of the isosceles triangle
are called the legs. The other
side is called the base and the
angles between the base and
the congruent sides are
called base angles. The angle
made by the two legs of the
isosceles triangle is called
the vertex angle.
Because there is a
continues line
from Egyptian to
Greek
mathematics, all
of the listed facts
may well have
been known to
Egyptians. For
them, the
statement would
remain unrelated,
but for the Greeks,
they were the
beginning of an
extraordinary
development in
geometry.