The Philosophy of

Mathematics

Philosophy of
Mathematics from
the Pythagoreans
to Euclid
Barbara M. Sattler

ISSN 2399-2883 (online)

ISSN 2514-3808 (print)
 Elements in the Philosophy of Mathematics
edited by
Penelope Rush
University of Tasmania
Stewart Shapiro
The Ohio State University

PHILOSOPHY
OF MATHEMATICS FROM
THE PYTHAGOREANS
TO EUCLID

Barbara M. Sattler
Ruhr University Bochum
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 Philosophy of Mathematics from the
Pythagoreans to Euclid
Elements in the Philosophy of Mathematics

DOI: 10.1017/9781009122788
First published online: April 2025

Barbara M. Sattler
Ruhr University Bochum
Author for correspondence: Barbara M. Sattler, [email protected]

Abstract: This Element looks at the very beginning of the philosophy of

mathematics in Western thought. It covers the first reflections on
attempts to untie mathematics from its practical usage in
administration, commerce, and land-surveying and discusses the first
ideas to see mathematical structures as constituents underlying the
physical world in the Pythagoreans. The first two sections focus on the
epistemic status of mathematical knowledge in relation to
philosophical knowledge and on the various ontological positions
ancient Greek philosophers in early and classical times ascribe to
mathematical objects – from independent and separate entities to
mere abstractions and idealisations. Section 3 discusses the
paradigmatic role mathematical deductions have played for
philosophy, the role of mathematical diagrams, and mathematical
methods of interest for philosophers. Section 4, finally, investigates
a couple of individual concepts that are fundamental for both
philosophy and mathematics, such as infinity.

Keywords: deductions, principles, numbers and geometrical objects, Plato,

Aristotle, Euclid

© Barbara M. Sattler 2025

ISBNs: 9781009578905 (HB), 9781009114066 (PB), 9781009122788 (OC)
ISSNs: 2399-2883 (online), 2514-3808 (print)
 Contents

Introduction 1

1 Ontology: What Kind of Things Are

Mathematical Objects? 11

2 Epistemology: Mathematical Knowledge versus

Philosophical Knowledge 25

3 Methodology 38

4 Central Concepts of Philosophy and Mathematics 52

References 69
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 1

Introduction
In contrast to Babylonian and Egyptian mathematics,1 the older forerunners in the
Mediterranean area, the focus of ancient Greek mathematics was not on applied but
on theoretical mathematics. The Greeks were the first interested not only in the
verification of results, but also in deductive proofs and justifications of the methods
employed. Proof theory as a study of the structure of deductive proofs became a field
of interest in its own right.2 These features of ancient Greek mathematics already
lend themselves to philosophical investigations and bring mathematics close to the
general theoretical investigations that philosophy likewise is engaged with.
The difference in approach between Babylonian and Egyptian mathematics,
on the one hand, and Greek mathematics on the other can already be seen if we
compare mathematical problems students are given in textbooks.3 First, the
Babylonian and Egyptian traditions embed a mathematical task in a practical
context; for example, they may ask their students to ‘find the area of a silo’, while
an equivalent Greek text would ask the students to ‘find the area of a cylinder’
and thus show a much higher degree of abstraction. Furthermore, the Babylonian
and Egyptian texts usually deal with an individual example using concrete
numbers, the calculation of which is then shown.4 For example, given a square
field of 100 square cubits, a text asks the students to find the diameter of a round
field of the same size, and then walks through the calculation and may verify the
answer by calculating the area from the diameter. The student will then use the
same procedure for similar problems. By contrast, Greek mathematics will state
the objects abstractly with letter labels;5 and instead of a verification of a
particular result, there is a demonstration that everything so constructed will
have the required property, which becomes the centrally important justification.
This focus on a theoretical investigation can also be seen in what were taken to be
the three most important problems in Greek geometry and the way the Greeks dealt
with them: (I) doubling the cube,6 (II) trisecting an angle, and (III) squaring the
circle.7

1
For an overview, see Neugebauer (1969).
2
The uniqueness of proof in Greek culture is, however, debated by historians of mathematics; see,
for example, Chemla (2024) who also questions the dichotomy of proof and computation and
gives interesting examples from ancient Chinese mathematics. We find what we may call proofs
in Babylonian mathematics, but these are procedures and thus not demonstrative, and they do not
seem to have been the mathematicians’ focus.
3
I owe the following example and important points of section I4 of this introduction to Henry Mendell.
4 5
See Neugebauer (1969). See Netz (1999).
6
Geometrically, this is a generalisation of the problem of doubling the square, which we will see in
Section 2.
7
We will see the last point with Euclid’s method of exhaustion in Section 4. The first two problems
were solved in algebra in the nineteenth century, while the third is transcendent and cannot be
grasped by an algebraic equation.
2 Philosophy of Mathematics

In this introduction we will briefly look at the development of Greek

mathematics out of a practical context and the demarcation of mathematics
from other sciences. We will also touch upon one central theme within Greek
mathematics: the relationship between geometry and arithmetic. That this is not
simply an antiquated question can be seen from the fact that we today base our
geometry on an arithmetical foundation. Finally, we will look at what to
a modern mind may seem to be the main peculiarities of ancient Greek
mathematics in general and the understanding of numbers in particular.
After this introduction8, we will start in Section 1 of the body of the Element
with a look at the kind of entities Greek philosophers took mathematical objects
to be. Section 2 will show the role mathematical knowledge played for
Greek philosophers. Section 3 will look at the paradigmatic role mathematical
deductions have played for philosophy, the role of mathematical diagrams, and
mathematical methods of interest for philosophers. Section 4, finally, investi-
gates a couple of individual concepts that are fundamental for both philosophy
and mathematics, such as infinity.
Timewise, we will cover the period from the beginning of ancient Greek math-
ematics and philosophising about it up to Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid: Plato and
Aristotle are the first high point of philosophical thinking about mathematics, while
Euclid marks the first high point in Greek mathematics. Euclid’s Elements provide
us with a large-scale systematisation of mathematical truth that builds on an
axiomatic structure. But Euclid’s Elements are not the first. This genre of literature,
which attempts to present the current mathematical knowledge in a ‘systematic’
form for learners, seems to have been developed first by Hippocrates of Chios in the
fifth century BCE. Euclid’s Elements was, however, the most influential of these
texts, presumably because of its large-scale architecture and its integration of the
most important material from earlier mathematicians, such as Eudoxus and
Theaetetus. As a consequence of the impact and range of Euclid’s Elements, most
of the earlier mathematical texts seem not to have been handed down any longer.
This means very little is left of the earlier Greek mathematical texts, and so there are
crucial blank spaces if we try to reconstruct the history of Greek mathematics. The
oldest surviving Greek mathematical text is a long fragment of the quadratures of
lunes by Hippocrates of Chios. It was contained in the History of Geometry written
by Eudemus, a student of Aristotle, a work that itself is lost for the most part.9
As for the very beginning, there was perhaps some inkling of mathematics as
a theoretical science in or around the time of Thales, if the ascription of that
theorem to him has any basis. But Thales did not write anything, so there are no
8
The sub-sections of the introductions are labelled I1-I5, while the main sections of the body of the
Element are labeled 1-4.
9
See von Fritz (1955), pp. 15–17 and Heath (1921), pp. 170–223.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 3

Chronology of Philosophers and Mathematicians mentioned:

650 600 550 500 450 400 350 300 250

Thales (625–547 BCE)

Anaximander (610–546)

Pythagoras (570–500)

Parmenides (515–445)
Zeno (490–430)

Protagoras (490–420)

Philolaus (470–385)

Hippocrates of Chios (active in the second half of the 5th century)

Theodorus of Cyrene (flourished in the second half of the 5th century)

Democritus (460–370)

Archytas (435/410–360/350)

Plato (427/28–347)

Theaetetus (417–369)

Eudoxus (390–340)

Aristotle (384–322)

Eudemus (second half of the 4th century)

Euclid (active around 300 BCE)

Proclus (412–485 CE)

Figure 1 Chronology of Philosophers and Mathematicians mentioned. (Most of

the dates are subject to some uncertainty.)

genuine fragments. Thus we will start with the Pythagoreans, where we defini-
tively find some mathematical developments and have some fragments of the
(later) Pythagoreans Philolaus and Archytas.
There are important mathematical developments happening after Euclid, for
example, with Archimedes (285–212 BCE) and Apollonius of Perga (around
240–190 BCE); but we will not be able to look into these. As for later
philosophers, the only one we will consult for a better understanding of the
history of mathematics is Proclus (412–485 CE), who wrote an influential
commentary on Euclid’s Elements and seems to have drawn extensively on
Eudemus’ work (see Figure 1).

I1 The Development of Greek Mathematics:

Detachment from a Practical Context
In spite of its theoretical focus, Greek mathematics had its origin in a practical
context. Geometry derived from land-surveying and city-planning, as we can
see already from the etymology of the English word ‘geometry’, which comes
from the Greek word geometria and literally means ‘measuring the earth’ or
4 Philosophy of Mathematics

‘land-surveying’. Herodotus claims in his Histories II, 109 that it is from the
equal division of the land in Egypt that the Greeks learned geometria. And
arithmetic was originally closely tied to administration and commerce – a
connection against which Plato still argues as not covering the most important
aspect of mathematics in Republic 525c–d.10
But very early on, Greek mathematics focused on mathematical characteris-
tics as such, independent of any practical context. We will see in Section 3 in the
body of this Element that it is only due to such a theoretical understanding of
mathematics that irrationals were discovered – for practical purposes, the
approximations we derive from measurements would have sufficed.
It seems that it was the abstraction of mathematical structure from the human
practical context that made these structures also applicable to the understanding
of nature and thus influenced the conceptualisation of the world – extending
arithmetic and geometry to the universe as a whole. Thus, we also find the idea
that mathematical structures are essential for the physical world early on. We will
see in Section 1 later in this Element that, for the Pythagoreans, numbers and
proportions constitute the universe, while for Plato geometrical forms as well as
proportions are employed in the setup of the universe. And for Plato and many
subsequent thinkers, the universe has to be spherical, because of the geometrical
perfection of the sphere (which includes that all points on the surface have the
same distance to the centre and that all the other Platonic solids can be inscribed
in the sphere, in the way we see it in Kepler); the motions of the heavenly bodies
accordingly have to be circular, which guarantees their intelligibility.

I2 Specific Demarcation of Mathematics in Ancient Greece

What did the Greeks in fact understand by mathematics? If we look at the Greek
word from which our term ‘mathematics’ derives, mathemata, we see that it
originally had a much broader meaning, indicating everything that is learnt,
pieces or fields of knowledge. It encompasses all those subjects where we need
to go through a certain course of steps in order to learn them and that hence may
not be known by everyone.
It is in effect three generations of philosophers whose usage of the word
eventually led to the meaning we are familiar with today: the Pythagoreans,
Plato, and Aristotle. First, the Pythagoreans distinguish among their students
between the akousmatikoi (the exoteric learners, who are only aware of the
practical rules of conduct) and the mathematikoi (the esoteric learners who have

10
For the practical and social origins of mathematics and questions such as how large a role the
Greek culture of public debate and argumentation played in the development of mathematics, see
Cuomo (2001), especially chapters 1 and 2.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 5

gone through the full theory, or the advanced learners). And they also seem to
have been the first to use ‘mathematics’ as a common name for arithmetic and
geometry together. Secondly, Plato, in his depiction of the education of the
future leaders of the ideal state in Republic VII, gives a curriculum that builds
mainly on arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music for the advanced learn-
ers; which are thus the mathemata to be learned. Finally, Aristotle divides the
theoretical sciences – the first division we find in Western thought – into first
philosophy (metaphysics/theology), physics (natural philosophy), and mathem-
atics (see, e.g., Metaphysics 1026a18–19).
This long process of coining the meaning of the word also reflects the fact
that mathematics and philosophy are usually understood to derive from the
same origin, which was in general seen as wisdom.11 It is not clear when
mathematics separated off from this, but it was one of the first, if not the first,
science to do so. Accordingly, it seems to be its own field already in the fifth
century BCE, and could be seen as paradigmatic for other sciences, as we will
see later in Section 2 in the main body of the Element. As such, mathematics
seems to have influenced philosophy by the rigour of its argumentation, by
building a system starting from a couple of basic axioms, and by its use of
deductions. And it also became an important subject of philosophical reflec-
tions for the question of what is essential for a science.
Among the sixth-century Presocratics, we find several philosopher-
mathematicians, like the Pythagoreans and perhaps also Thales. Likewise, in
the fifth and fourth centuries BCE we find thinkers working in both fields, such
as the atomist Democritus, who wrote on conic sections, and the Pythagoreans
Philolaus and Archytas. And Plato’s Academy seems to have been a centre
where not only were philosophers trained, but also mathematical research was
performed by people like Eudoxus and Theaetetus. A sign reading ‘Let no one
ignorant of geometry enter here’ was allegedly placed over the entrance to the
Academy. Plato himself saw mathematics at times as paradigmatic, at others as
propaedeutic for philosophy. Aristotle also took mathematics as paradigmatic
for philosophy in its method in certain respects, but distinguished it from first
philosophy and physics by its objects – mathematical objects are changeless,
but have no existence independent of empirical things. The Hellenistic philoso-
pher Epicurus, however, excluded mathematics from the sciences as having no
practical relevance, and for the Stoics likewise it was not central.
Which mathematical sciences belong to mathematics in ancient Greece? For the
most part the four disciplines arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music are seen

11
Salmon (1980) talks about the ‘twin origin of philosophy and geometry’; see also Heath (1921),
p. 3.
6 Philosophy of Mathematics

as constituting the mathematical sciences, a quartet we find first in the Pythagorean

Archytas and in Plato’s Republic.12 In the Middle Ages they became the quadriv-
ium, which together with the trivium formed the basis for liberal education at
universities. Aristotle, however, groups astronomy and harmonics, together with
optics, as the more ‘physical’ branches of mathematics.13 These latter sciences
especially are close to natural philosophy for Aristotle.
An understanding of ancient mathematics faces the additional problem
that the ancient Greeks distinguished between arithmetic and what they call
logistikê – a distinction not known to modern mathematics. There are different
interpretations of this distinction, but for the most part, arithmetic is understood
as dealing with number theory and logistikê as the art of calculation.14
Finally, it is an interesting question whether the ancient Greeks thought that
there exists a general mathematical science or not – here it seems philosophers
and mathematicians come apart. The first text where we find the idea of a
general mathematics discussed comes from Aristotle, who claims that universal
mathematics applies to all mathematical kinds (Metaphysics 1026a27); scholars
have usually understood him to be referring to Eudoxus’ theory of proportion
which holds for different mathematical sciences. What is left open is the
question whether general mathematics possesses its own specific subject
(perhaps something like pure quantity) or not.15 But we do not seem to find
any such universal mathematics in Euclid. Euclid’s concern for homogeneity
indicates that he thinks of a proposition in Book V as a unified formulation for a
number of analogous propositions concerning particular magnitudes like lines,
planes, and so on. He does not seem to think of it as a single proposition about
more abstract objects like magnitudes or quantities as such, and he treats
proportions in geometry and in the arithmetical books separately. Euclid is,
however, also not interested in discussing the metaphysical basis for the
applicability of propositions, but only in reasons to believe them.

I3 Relationship between Geometry and Arithmetic

Although geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy were seen as the main
mathematical sciences, we will concentrate on geometry and arithmetic in this
Element, which is also what Euclid’s Elements focuses on. While we can clearly
understand, for example, Books I–IV of Euclid’s Elements as plane geometry,
and Books VII–IX as concerning arithmetic, it is less clear how exactly

12
Where solid geometry is added as a fifth.
13
Physics 194a8; for the classification of mathematics, see also Heath (1921), pp. 10ff.
14
See Heath (1921), pp. 13–16.
15
For details, see Mendell (2004). See also Aristotle, Metaphysics M, 3; K, 7; and Posterior
Analytics I, 5.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 7

geometry and arithmetic were defined and in which relation they were seen to
each other. We may think of modern geometry as a study of spatial structures,
but ancient Greek mathematics seems to treat it as a study of magnitudes, more
precisely of figures. And while we seem to get a neat division of Greek
mathematics into the study of multitude or discrete quantity, namely arithmetic,
and the study of magnitude or continuous quantity, namely geometry, it is
unclear whether it was conceptualised like this before Aristotle’s Categories.16
In spite of hints of a universal mathematics, Aristotle usually treats geometry
and arithmetic as two different sciences that differ in their genus. Their exact
relationship was a matter of intensive dispute, which is connected with the
question of a possible superiority of one over the other. (This also concerns
questions like whether the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication,
division, and so on are geometrical or arithmetical.)
In contrast to Babylonian and Egyptian mathematics, Greek mathematics some-
time in the fifth century BCE started to geometrise mathematics, performing
mathematical proofs from then onwards mainly in geometrical terms (presumably
since certain topics, like incommensurability, could only be dealt with geometric-
ally, and arithmetic could not handle fractions).17 Thus at least since 400 BCE
geometry was dominant vis-à-vis arithmetic in Western mathematics, a dominance
that lasted until early modern times. It is also reflected in the fact that Euclid’s
Elements shows a much more systematically developed geometry than arithmetic,
giving many results and procedures in geometrical terms that we would give in
arithmetical ones. Furthermore, Euclid represents numbers by lines, and what we
understand as arithmetic operations, such as addition and subtraction, he seems to
understand in geometrical terms (e.g., what we would think of as adding number x to
number y Euclid represents as extending a line AB by the length of line CD).18
Geometrical terminology is used for arithmetic, for example, when in Book VII,
definitions 16 and 17, the result of two numbers having been multiplied is called a
plane number, and that of three numbers having been multiplied a solid number.
In philosophical reflection, however, we find different assessments of the
relationship between arithmetic and geometry. For the most part, arithmetic is
seen as superior. The Pythagorean Archytas calls it superior to geometry and other
sciences in DK47B4, because it treats its objects in a clearer way and ‘brings

16
That we cannot simply presuppose such a distinction from the very beginning is clear also from
the fact that the Pythagoreans represented numbers with the help of pebbles and, keeping the
extension of the pebbles in mind, seem to have treated numbers in part like magnitudes. See
Sattler (2020a), p. 293.
17
The arithmetic-geometric problem of doubling the square has a possible geometric solution for
the Greeks (i.e., the diagonal) but no arithmetic one.
18
See, e.g., Elements IX, 21–27; and also Mueller (1969), pp. 302–304. But see Unguru (1975) for a
different understanding. There are only a few traces of calculation procedures in Euclid’s arithmetic.
8 Philosophy of Mathematics

proofs to completion where geometry leaves them out’.19 And for Aristotle
arithmetic is prior, more exact, and simpler than geometry, since it is based on
fewer things.20 His example in Posterior Analytics is a point in geometry, which,
like a unit in arithmetic, is a basic being, but in addition also has a position, so that
it involves more features than the arithmetical unit. The greater simplicity and
accuracy of arithmetic brings it closer to first principles than geometry for
Aristotle and thus demonstrates the superiority of arithmetic over geometry.
The Pythagorean Philolaus, however, calls geometry the source and mother-
city of the other mathematical sciences in DK44A7a and thus seems to assume
geometry to be superior to arithmetic. This raises the question whether the
differences in assessment of their relationship derives from a different point of
view or from a development within mathematics. The latter suggestion has
sometimes been connected with the fact that within ancient Greek mathematics,
arithmetic seems to have been more prominent in the beginning before the
geometrisation of mathematics in the fifth century (for example, Szabó (2004)
understands Archytas’ claim of the superiority of logistikê as depicting an older
Pythagorean attitude dominant before the geometrical turn). Against this
developmental thesis, however, speaks the fact that Aristotle, quite some time
after any geometrical turn, claims arithmetic to be superior. And also the
Pythagoreans were not unified in this respect, since Archytas, living in the first
half of the fourth century, claims arithmetic to be superior, while Philolaus, a
generation older than him, claims this for geometry. So it is more likely that these
different assessments are due to different points of view – the mathematicians
tending to geometry since this is the more powerful discipline within ancient
Greek mathematics, and philosophers tending to arithmetic since its basis seems
to be closer to first scientific principles.21 In any case, the tension between the
status of arithmetic and geometry led to general ontological and epistemological
questions, some of which we will see in the first two main sections.

I4 Specificities of Greek Mathematics

While much more abstract than Babylonian mathematics, ancient Greek math-
ematics is much less abstract than modern mathematics, and the abstraction we
find in ancient mathematics is of a very different sort than our modern one.

19
See also Huffmann (2005), pp. 225–252. The greater clarity of arithmetic may become obvious if
we look, for example, at proposition IV, 10 in Euclid’s Elements: ‘To construct an isosceles
triangle having each of the angles at the base double of the remaining one’. Arithmetically this is
relatively simple to solve: 2x + x/2 = 180; thus x = 72; while Euclid gives a rather complicated
drawing. Given that Archytas talks in fact about logistikê in this fragment, not about arithmetic,
he may, however, only be thinking about it working technically more quickly.
20
Posterior Analytics, I, 27, 87a34–37; Metaphysics, A, 2, 982a26–28 and M, 3, 1078a9ff.
21
See Mueller (1969). It is unclear why we find the difference in assessment in the Pythagoreans.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 9

Thus, when we talk about the philosophy of ancient Greek mathematics, we

should be aware that with mathematics we are talking about a somewhat
different beast than when we refer to modern mathematics.22
Greek mathematics has a certain level of abstraction in that it is interested
in general mathematical features as such; it is, for the most part, non-metrical,
that is, it does not use numbers for general mathematical problems, and it is
independent of any concrete practical context. But ancient Greek geometry is
much closer to perception in its reliance on diagrammatic representations than
its modern pendant. It is pre-algebraic, pre-structural, and pre-set theoretic.23
Ancient Greek mathematics does not employ functional variables, but only
parameters (and proportions) – so while for certain operations we can freely
chose a value, once it is chosen it always has to be the same value and cannot
vary. Infinity is in part presupposed by ancient Greek mathematicians, without,
however, taking up the fundamental discussions about this concept we find in
the philosophers. And, as we can see in Euclid, Greek mathematics of classical
and early Hellenistic times gives us only the minimal meta-language to connect
arguments – it is only philosophers who deal with meta-reflections. Let us
finally have a closer look at the Greek understanding of numbers.

I5 Notion of Numbers
Number theory started in what we may consider as a systematic way in ancient
Greek mathematics. Books VII–IX of Euclid’s Elements provide us with a
definition of primes, an algorithm for computing the greatest common divisor
of two numbers (what we now call the Euclidean algorithm; VII, 2), and the first
known proof of the infinitude of primes (IX, 20).
But there are three important differences in the ancient Greek understanding
of numbers to modern accounts:

(1) First, a number is a collection of units; it is defined as ‘multitude composed

of units’ (Elements VII, 2). The number seven, for example, is a collection
of seven units.24
(2) Second, 1 is for the most part not seen as a number, but as the beginning or
principle (archê) of number, what defines the unit. 1 is not a number in the

22
For ancient philosophers, it is seen as focusing on the same world as other theoretical sciences
are – for example, for Aristotle both mathematics and physics deal with the empirical world, just
with different aspects, and for Plato both mathematics and other theoretical sciences deal with
intelligible structures.
23
The idea of structure, essential in modern mathematics, plays no role in ancient mathematics; see
Mueller (1969), p. 299.
24
Accordingly, Euclid starts his definitions in the arithmetical books with defining a unit, and only
afterwards a number (VII, definitions 1 and 2).
10 Philosophy of Mathematics

way 3 and 4 are, since the 1 determines what we count (1 defines the unit with
which we count, for example, book, and then we count how many books
there are in my room).25 So there is a strong difference between 1 and
numbers. We see that units thus serve double-duty – they are the constituents
of each number and they determine the one that is the basis for counting.
(3) Finally, for the Greeks, numbers mean positive integers, so we are dealing
with a theory of natural numbers; other numbers are not known. Irrational
pffiffi
numbers, like 2, are not numbers for the Greeks, but proportions between
magnitudes, since they can deal with them only geometrically, not arithmet-
ically. Number in itself implies rationality and countability for the Greeks.

While Babylonian and Egyptian mathematics used fractions, there were no

real fractions in Greek mathematics up to Archimedes in the third century BCE
(apart from ⅔ in a practical context). Greek mathematicians took the 1 as
indivisible unity, so that there could not be any fractions;26 instead, they used
proportions and submultiples. Submultiples allow us to treat fractions as mul-
tiples of a more basic unit; for example, if I have 1=7 , I can understand one as a
basic unit which I have to take seven times to get to the old basic unit. The
expression “1=7 ” thus gives me two different units and indicates a mathematical
operation (the relation of the smaller to the bigger unit), not a number.
Numbers are not defined in terms of successor functions or by what they
allow us to do and they are not sets. Instead they are understood as a quantified
plurality of things of some sort. Numbers used in ordinary life are seen as tied to
a concrete group of things (for example, a three of cups, if I am counting my
cups). And what is sometimes called ‘mathematical number’, that is, the
numbers mathematicians deal with, is tied to a monas, namely a mathematical
unit (which is what Euclid refers to in his definition of numbers).27
The ancient Greeks also investigated which further features characterise
numbers. This can be seen especially in the discussion about oddness and
evenness of numbers and of prime numbers. The Greeks not only distinguished
between odd and even numbers, but also even-times odd numbers,28 even-times
even numbers, and so on. And they not only discuss prime numbers, but also
numbers prime to each other.29 The number 2 is an especially interesting case,

25
See Klein (1968), chapter 6.
26
See Plato Republic 525d–e; Aristotle’s Metaphysics Iota claims that the one is treated as
indivisible; see Sattler (2020a), chapter 8.
27
For the Pythagoreans, mathematical numbers are made up not of abstract units, but of units
having magnitudes.
28
That is, a number of the form 2(2m + 1); see Euclid VII, def. 9.
29
I.e. numbers ‘measured by a unit alone as a common measure’. We think of prime numbers as the
most basic building blocks of our number system and thus of their effects, while the ancients
think more about how numbers themselves can be characterised.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 11

for it is an even number for Plato and Aristotle, and a prime number for Aristotle
and Euclid.30 It is, however, neither even nor prime for the Pythagoreans, but
constitutes, together with the 1, the first principles of all numbers; and for other
mathematicians, like Nicomachus, being a prime number is a sub-division of
odd numbers.
Early Greek mathematics represented numbers by pebbles,31 while later on
numbers were represented by lines, which is also what we find in Euclid’s
arithmetical books. Like the Egyptians, the Greeks used a decimal system
(in contrast to the Babylonians, who used also a sexagesimal system). And
the Greeks used two numerical systems with different advantages and disad-
vantages: the Herodiadic and the ordinary Ionic alphabetical numerals.32

1 Ontology: What Kind of Things Are Mathematical Objects?

This section will investigate what kind of entities Greek philosophers took math-
ematical objects to be. We will see that their debates prefigure some of the most
important ontological positions in current debates, such as Platonism,33 abstrac-
tionism, and, according to some scholars, also fictionalism. Following roughly
Aristotle’s analysis in Metaphysics M,34 we can say that the main distinction in
determining the ontological status of mathematical objects is whether or not they
are seen as having their own existence, independent of either the world or human
minds. If they have an independent existence, they could either exist separately –
here we are heading towards Platonism – or exist nevertheless in physical things –
this is a position we will find with the Pythagoreans. By contrast, Aristotle
understands mathematical entities as dependent on physical things; he holds a
version of abstractionism.
This section will start with the Pythagorean assumption that numbers exist in
perceptible objects; but rather than being dependent on these objects, numbers
constitute them. We will then move on to the position of Plato, who also
understands mathematical objects as independent of the physical world, but as
existing separately. More exactly speaking we will discuss two central onto-
logical claims concerning mathematical objects in Plato: first the claim of the
Phaedo and the Republic that mathematical objects, like numbers or equality,

30
Topics 157b and Elements VII, definition 12.
31
See Simplicius (2002), In Phys. 457 and KRS (1983), p. 337 for a depiction.
32
For details, see Heath (1921), pp. 26–64.
33
Even if Plato himself understood mathematical objects, as we will see, somewhat differently
from how they are understood in modern Platonism as we find it, for instance, in Gödel or,
arguably, in Frege.
34
Aristotle’s Metaphysics deals with the most fundamental beings, things, and principles there are;
Books M and N discuss whether there are unmoved eternal Beings and if so, whether mathemat-
ical entities belong to this group.
12 Philosophy of Mathematics

are entities that exist separately as part of an intelligible realm. Secondly, the
idea in the Timaeus that geometrical bodies, which are themselves made up of
perfect triangles, underlie the four physical elements earth, water, air, and fire,
and are thus the building blocks of physical things. The position of the Timaeus
may sound somewhat Pythagorean, except that it is not numbers but geomet-
rical figures that constitute the physical things and thus also exist in them.35
However, in the Platonic picture the geometrical forms come into play once
Timaeus’s creator god applies them to the chaotic material world – accordingly,
these geometrical figures exist before, and originally also separate from, the
physical world.
A stark contrast to the Platonic and Pythagorean metaphysics of mathematics
will finally be found in Aristotle’s understanding of mathematical objects as
abstractions and, perhaps, idealisations of the physical ones. For Aristotle,
mathematical objects are thus dependent on the physical world from which
they are derived and which grounds them ontologically. With Euclid, finally,
we do not get any explicit ontological commitment. But we may wonder
what ontological implications claims like ‘let there be a square ABCD’ (‘Estô
tetragônon to ABCD’) have.36

1.1 Numbers as the Ultimate Constituents of Things

with the Pythagoreans
When we look at early Pythagoreanism, we will distinguish between those
Pythagoreans that Aristotle discusses in his Metaphysics and the earliest
Pythagoreans of whom we possess reliable fragments, namely Philolaus, a
contemporary of Socrates, and Archytas, a contemporary of Plato.37 We will
start with the Pythagoreans as reported by Aristotle and then continue on to
Philolaus.38

35
Accordingly, the main interlocutor of this dialogue, Timaeus, has often been seen as a
Pythagorean.
36
Is it purely meant as something we should imagine in our head? Does it assume that there are squares
in the world around us? Or may those scholars be right who have toyed with the idea that Euclid was
related to the Platonic Academy and thus assumed ‘squares existing in themselves’? The first three
postulates of Book I have sometimes been read as postulating the existence of straight lines and
circles (see Heath (1921), p. 374 and Acerbi (2013), p. 681), but they do not tell us what kind of
existence they have. Mueller (1981), by contrast, understands the magnitudes dealt with in the
Elements as abstractions from objects that leave out all properties apart from quantity, and mathem-
atical units as leaving out all properties of objects apart from self-identity and numerosity.
37
It is unclear how exactly the fragments we have from the group Aristotle calls ‘the Pythagoreans’
relate to Archytas and Philolaus: they may reflect Aristotle’s interpretation of Philolaus or
Aristotle may indeed distinguish between the older Pythagoreanism and the Platonised
Pythagoreanism prevalent at his time; so there may have been genuinely different positions
among the Pythagoreans.
38
Philolaus did not use numbers, but limiters and unlimiteds as principles.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 13

Aristotle reports in his Metaphysics that the Pythagoreans assume mathem-

atical objects to exist in perceptible objects and that their principles and
elements are the principles and elements of the sensible world:

[T]he Pythagoreans, as they are called, devoted themselves to mathematics;

they were the first to advance this study, and having been brought up in it, they
thought its principles were the principles of all things. Since of these prin-
ciples numbers are by nature the first, and in numbers they seemed to see
many resemblances to the things that exist and come into being […] since,
again, they saw that the attributes and the ratios of the musical scales were
expressible in numbers; since, then, all other things seemed in their whole
nature to be modelled after numbers, and numbers seemed to be the first
things in the whole of nature, they supposed the elements of numbers to be the
elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a
number (985b23–986a3).

But the Pythagoreans, because they saw many attributes of numbers belong-
ing to sensible bodies, supposed real things to be numbers – not separable
numbers, however, but numbers of which real things consist. But why?
Because the attributes of numbers are present in a musical scale and in the
heavens and in many other things (1090a20–25).

So for the Pythagoreans, mathematical properties (presumably properties like

being quantifiable, being of odd or even number) can be found in sensible
phenomena, in whatever we empirically observe. This seems to have led them to
infer that sensible bodies either consist of numbers or are phenomena of
numbers in some way. While Plato’s idealism and Aristotle’s abstractionism
may strike us as not true but plausible or at least intelligible, some readers may
simply be flabbergasted by this Pythagorean position. However, it seems to have
been a very early (if very specialised) position in Greek mathematics and
philosophy and features of this position have been taken up repeatedly in the
history of thought, most recently perhaps by Baron (2021), who calls his
suggestion that the important properties of mathematical entities are structural
and as such also to be found in the physical world a ‘Pythagorean proposal’. Let
us look at possible reasons for the Pythagorean position.
It may be seen as answering the puzzle how it can be that numbers follow their
own rules (independent of the physical world), but yet are applicable to the
sensible realm to the degree that mathematical statements are true of the world.39
This combination would be possible, according to a Pythagorean picture, if

39
At least this is a puzzle to which we will see different answers in Plato’s Timaeus and in Aristotle
later and it seems plausible that the Pythagoreans may have raised this question. It is unclear
whether the Pythagorean idea of numbers ‘constituting’ things is meant to suggest numbers to be
physical elements or principles of things.
14 Philosophy of Mathematics

mathematical objects are in the world and constitute sensible bodies – as such
constituents, numbers can be understood independently but are yet immediately
connected with the perceptible world.
The applicability of mathematics to the physical world is shown with the
example of music and astronomy. There seems to be one phenomenon in
particular mentioned in our two quotations that led to the idea that numbers
constitute things: musical scales and harmonies. It is, after all, not the relationship
of this very string to that very string that constitutes an octave, but the relationship
between every pair of strings whose lengths are in a relation of 1:2. So it
ultimately seems to be the relationship of 1:2 (which can be realised in different
materials that can vibrate so as to produce a sound) which constitutes the octave.
But if numerical ratios underlie musical intervals, they may also underlie other
perceptible things and phenomena which display mathematical features.
The preceding passages suggest a strong interpretation of the idea that
numbers underlie the sensible world in the sense that numbers are indeed seen
as the ultimate constituents and essence of sensible things.40 Aristotle claims
that for the Pythagoreans, numbers are not only the principles of everything but
also that the whole of nature is ‘modelled after numbers’.
But there is also a weaker interpretation available for the idea that mathemat-
ical structures underlie the physical world41 – an interpretation that may be
displayed by some fragments of the Pythagorean Philolaus, who claims that ‘all
things that are known have numbers. For it is not possible for anything to be
thought of or known without this’ (DK44B4).
Philolaus here is not making a claim about the whole universe, but about all
things that can be known (which may or may not have the same extension as the
whole universe). And these things are not said to be number, but only to have
number (in contrast to the picture in Plato’s Timaeus, they themselves possess
numbers, rather than have numbers bestowed upon them). The basic idea seems
to be that we can have knowledge of things, and our reason essentially works
with numbers, so there has to be something numerical about the things known
(for example, that they are quantifiable). Here numbers are a necessary condi-
tion for knowledge and because things we know have them, mathematical
operations are presumably also applicable to these things. But it is left open
how strong the ontological commitment is that is entailed in the idea of ‘having
a number’ – it may simply mean that physical things have a quantitative aspect,

40
See also fragment DK58A10. In Metaphysics 987b8f. Aristotle also claims that the Pythagoreans
understand sensible things as imitations of numbers.
41
The strong interpretation may seem similar to modern accounts that think everything is in fact a
code; while a weaker interpretation may be shown when people talk as if a graph, or numerical
depiction, is not simply a depiction, but the thing talked about.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 15

or that they are a unity composed of a number of parts.42 And while the fact that
numbers are tied to the knowability of things suggests that they are not tied to
some accidental feature, it is left open whether there may also be other features
we can know about things, for example, some quality, that may be something
over and above the fundamental knowledge we have based on numbers.
Three points seem to be in the background of the Pythagorean assumption
that things either have numbers or are even constituted by numbers: first, the
wide-spread understanding in ancient Greece that numbers are multiples of a
certain unit, usually of concrete things,43 and thus closely linked to the percep-
tible world; secondly, a peculiarity of the Pythagoreans, that numbers are seen
as generated;44 and finally, the Pythagorean idea that there is a cause for the
separation and distinction of the number series – their discreteness is accounted
for or grounded by the void.45 Thinking of numbers as requiring void to separate
them suggests understanding numbers along the lines of bodily stuff. And it fits
the fact that the Pythagoreans conceived of numbers with the help of pebbles.
Accordingly, when they claim that physical things are constituted out of num-
bers, this must also be seen against the background of a more physical under-
standing of numbers. Aristotle, however, thinks that the Pythagorean position
confuses the indivisibility of numerical units with the indivisibility of physical
things and accordingly faces two problems: first, it leads to the assumption of
atoms (indivisibles) of a sort, and Aristotle attempts to show in his Physics that
atomism gets us into problems if assumed for the physical world46 and destroys
mathematics (for then a mathematician could not cut a line wherever she needs
to, but only where atoms allow); second, it remains unclear how numerical
units, which in themselves have no physical magnitude and weight, can make up
something with a physical magnitude and weight.47

42
Or constituted out of Philolaus’ most basic principles, the unlimiteds and limiters; see Huffmann
(1993).
43
So (with the exception of mathematical numbers) there is no talk of three as such, but three
apples, three stars, etc.
44
Aristotle strongly opposes this idea, which for him means not understanding the eternity of
numbers (Metaphysics 1091a12–22).
45
Aristotle, Physics 213b22–27, DK58B30. Numbers are not, as for us, simply a paradigm of
discreteness.
46
E.g., in Physics VI, 12 Aristotle shows that there cannot be atoms, since we can always divide
things further at least conceptually – otherwise, at some point we could not account for
differences in speed any longer.
47
Aristotle, Metaphysics M, 8, 1083b8–19. Aristotle seems to entertain two different interpret-
ations of the Pythagorean position: first, that they talk in fact about a heaven and bodies different
from the perceptible ones (Metaphysics N, 3, 1090a20–35). Second, that they assume the units of
numbers to possess spatial extension (Metaphysics M, 6, 1080b16ff.), which is in conflict with
Aristotle’s assumption that the numbers the mathematicians work with are abstract numbers and
thus without any extension and weight.
16 Philosophy of Mathematics

Moving on to Plato’s account of mathematics now, we will encounter two

of his central ontological claims concerning mathematical objects: (a) the
claim that mathematical objects are entities with their own independent
existence, and (b) the idea in the Timaeus that geometrical bodies, which
are themselves made up of perfect triangles, underlie the four elements and
are thus the building blocks of physical things. The first claim (a) derives
from a discussion about the question what ontological status mathematical
objects have which Plato raises explicitly in his Republic, and to some
degree also in his Phaedo. It seems to hold true of mathematical objects in
general, but the emphasis seems to be on arithmetic. And so we learn of
numbers not only that numbers as such exist independently of the physical
world, but also that the many instances of each individual number which the
mathematicians use for their calculations are intermediates between the
sensible and the intelligible objects. The second claim (b) derives from the
attempt in the Timaeus to explain the perceptible world as something that
can be known, that is intelligible. The focus here is on geometry, but
proportions are also understood to underlie the orbits of the motions of the
heavenly bodies.

1.2 Mathematical Objects as Part of the Intelligible Realm

in Plato’s Republic and Phaedo
Aristotle, Plato’s main opponent with respect to the ontology of mathematical
objects, provides us with a rationale for the assumption of separately existing
mathematical entities in his Metaphysics 1090a35–b1: those thinkers who make
numbers exist separately, like Plato, do so because axioms do not seem to hold
of perceptible things, but yet are true in themselves.
In his example of the line, that we will discuss in the next section, Plato
assumes mathematical objects to exist separately as intelligible entities that
are not derived from the perceptible world (even though mathematicians use
sensible objects as examples). But his mathematical ontology is in fact more
complex than that. For the main claim by Plato and many Platonists about
mathematical entities, namely that they exist not only independently of
physical entities but also separately in an intelligible realm, leaves it open
how to think of this logical space. And this separate logical space is not
necessarily the same as the logical space of Platonic Forms. We get a
distinction among mathematical entities between those that behave very
much like Forms, and those that are the tools of the mathematicians that
have an intermediate status between Forms and sensible things. Let me
explain this a bit more with respect to its most prominent example, the
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 17

distinction between what is commonly called Form numbers and mathemat-

ical numbers.48
Forms are, roughly speaking, separately existing universals (Beauty as such) that
are eternal, immutable, simple, and existing on their own.49 In the same way in
which on a Platonic account there is a Form of Justice, and a Form of Equality,
there seems to be a Form of twoness (Phaedo 101c) – the Form of two is what it
means to be two. Every pair, and every 2 I use, participates in twoness. Being a
Form also implies that there can be only one of it.50 No mathematical operation is
defined on the Form number, since this would not fit with Forms existing inde-
pendently. In addition to Form numbers, there are also the numbers the mathemat-
icians work with when they multiply, for example, two times two. Of these there
has to be a plurality and operations need to be defined on them, otherwise our
arithmetical practises would not be possible. For the Platonists, we thus need to
have one intelligible object that grounds twoness of which there can only be one,
the Form number, and another one that can be an object of mathematical operations
and of which there can be a plurality, mathematical numbers.51
These mathematical numbers are also independent of the sensible two I write
in the sand and of concrete pairs in the perceptible world; if, let us say, we were
living in a world which contained only five items, a mathematician could still
calculate what is six times six, even if no items corresponded to this operation in
the perceptible world. Accordingly, mathematical numbers seem to be treated as
so-called intermediates:52 they possess an ontological status in between the
individual intelligible single Forms and the many perceptible things, since they
are many, like the perceptible things, but yet intelligible and not sensible, like
the Forms.53 The full Platonic story in fact even seems to contain four kinds of

48
Aristotle in his Metaphysics M gives us a division of the metaphysical positons in Plato’s
Academy according to which some, like Plato himself, took there to be Form numbers and
mathematical numbers; others assumed only mathematical numbers – a position usually ascribed
to Speusippus – and finally some, like Xenocrates, tried to identify both Form numbers and
mathematical numbers.
49
This holds true of the middle Plato, while the late Plato, in his Sophist, assumes Forms to be
complex. The fact that Forms seem to self-predicate – for example, the Form of the Beautiful is
not only the reason for all sensible things to be beautiful, but is also itself the perfect paradigm of
what it is a Form of, of what it means to be beautiful – has led scholars to question whether
Platonic Forms are indeed universals in our sense.
50
Since a single Form is meant to be responsible for the same feature in different things.
51
Similarly, there seems to be only one Form of a circle, but the mathematicians deal with several, for
example, when comparing the relationship of the diameter of a circle to its area to that of another
circle.
52
See Metaphysics 1090b35–36.
53
See also Proclus (1992), who opens his commentary on Euclid with the claim that the mathem-
atical objects occupy a middle place between the indivisible Forms and the things that are
through and through divisible. Mendell (2022), p. 359 claims these intermediates to be the
ancestors of mathematical Platonism, since mathematical propositions are true of these objects.
18 Philosophy of Mathematics

‘twos’: (1) the perceptible pairs in the world, (2) the mathematical numbers
which are used in mathematical operations, (3) the Form number two, and
finally (4) the indefinite two (or dyad) which Aristotle reports to function as
the principle of plurality in Plato’s unwritten doctrine.54

1.3 Mathematical Objects as Underlying the Physical

Realm in Plato’s Timaeus
We saw that with the Pythagoreans, mathematical objects constitute the
physical world. And also according to Plato’s Timaeus, mathematical objects
exist in the world – geometrical bodies underlie the physical phenomena we
perceive. In contrast to the Pythagoreans, it is not numbers but geometrical
bodies that Plato sees employed. Moreover, these mathematical objects used in
the Platonic universe originally exist separately from the physical world and are
thus independent of it; the geometrical solids are used to bestow order onto the
originally given chaos and to transform it into a regular cosmos.
The Timaeus is Plato’s cosmology and most encompassing account of the
natural world –from the microstructure of the atomistic particles underlying the
basic elements of the world all the way up to the arrangement of the heavenly
bodies. It gives an account of how our cosmos was shaped by a divine demiurge
out of an independently existing space-like receptacle which is filled with traces
of the physical elements. Our physical universe is seen as understandable55
because the demiurge builds it by imitating an intelligible model; and he does so
by using mathematical structures in order to imbue the irregular traces of the
chaotically moving elements with order and measure. It is in three areas that the
demiurge uses mathematical structures: (a) proportions are used for connecting
all the physical material there is in the world body, thus securing the unity of the
world body, and for determining the order according to which the fabric of the
world soul and thus also the orbits of the heavenly bodies are formed (Timaeus
31b–32c and 35b–36d); (b) the number series is employed for measuring the
motions of sensible objects (39b–d); and finally (c) the material atoms are built
from geometrical bodies (53a–55e);56 we will concentrate on this last point.
Before the divine demiurge starts his work, there are only traces of the four so-
called elements (53b). With these four elements, fire, air, water, and earth, Plato
takes up what in the physical investigations of his time was seen as the material

54
See Physics 203a4–16. In Metaphysics N, 3 Aristotle ascribes a threefold ontology to Plato:
perceptible numbers, mathematical numbers, and Form numbers (1090b32–36), while in Plato’s
dialogues we find only hints of such a three- or fourfold ontology. In contrast to modern
‘Platonism’, this ontology does not contain the set of all pairs.
55
At least to the degree that a probable account (an eikos mythos) is possible.
56
For a more detailed account, see Sattler (2012) and (2020a), chapter 6.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 19

foundation of the perceptible world, while he also wants to make clear that these
are not really the most basic elements there are. For they themselves are made up
of geometrical bodies. Originally there are solely unintelligible traces of the
elements. It is only with the work of the demiurge that order and measure are
introduced into the world, so that the presumably crooked surfaces of these
elemental traces are formed into straight ones that make up the surfaces of
geometrical bodies.57 The geometrical bodies the demiurge chooses as the basis
for the physical ‘elements’ are the most regular (and thus most ‘beautiful’) solids,
what we have come to call ‘Platonic bodies’58 – tetrahedron, cube, octahedron,
icosahedron, and dodecahedron. Here Plato seems to have employed new math-
ematical research of his time, presumably undertaken by Theaetetus, that showed
that there can only be five convex polyhedra that are fully regular in the sense that
all faces are congruent regular polygons and the same number of faces meet
at every vertex.59 This research showed the exhaustiveness of these regular
polyhedra which Plato took up as a suitable basis for material ‘elements’.
Thinking of bodies in a mathematical way, Timaeus claims that these
geometrical solids are composed of basic surfaces – of triangles. As there is
no single kind of triangle out of which all the Platonic solids can be constructed,
it is assumed that the demiurge uses two different kinds of triangles: the
isosceles right-angled triangle out of which the surfaces of the cube are formed,
and the half-equilateral triangle as a basis for the tetrahedron, the octahedron,
and the icosahedron (see Figure 2). So the real ‘elements’ (in the sense of the
basic foundation of everything there is in the sensible world) are not fire, air,
water, and earth, but two kinds of triangles; and Plato leaves it explicitly open
whether there may be some even simpler elements out of which these surfaces
of the world are originally formed, such as lines.
The different geometrical solids are ascribed to the four elements according
to the following kind of similarity: as the cube has the most stable base (given its
surface area), it is the basis of earth, which is the most immobile of the elements;
whereas the body with the fewest faces must be the most mobile and the lightest,
thus the tetrahedron underlies fire.
While a single geometrical solid underlying the physical elements is too small
to be seen, an aggregated mass of them is perceptible. And, as in the case of other
atomistic accounts, what we then perceive is not simply an aggregate of atoms,
for example, not a bunch of mathematical tetrahedra, but the phenomenon we are
used to, fire. In contrast to merely mathematical tetrahedra, the tetrahedra

57
See Sattler (2012), p. 180.
58
They are so called because Plato’s Timaeus is the first text to mention them.
59
See the proof in Euclid’s Elements XIII, proposition 18.
20 Philosophy of Mathematics

Figure 2 Platonic solids made out of basic triangles.60

constituting fire have a tendency to move to other pieces of fire and are connected
to the Form of fire in that they are an image of that Form (51b–52a).
Like mathematical solids, these building blocks of the elements can also be
transformed into each other. The transformation rules follow their mathematical
base: thus a particle of air can dissolve into two particles of fire, since an
octahedron provides the surfaces required to build two tetrahedra out of it.
While the Plato of the Republic is concerned about the intelligible status of
mathematical objects, in the Timaeus we find Plato focused on the usage of
geometrical figures for the explanation of the universe. He does not discuss the
ontological status of the geometrical solids, but we have also no reason to
assume he has given up on his earlier idea of ‘the square itself’ (Republic
510d–e), only because he is dealing with many squares in the physical world.
For him, the many geometrical solids are used to make the world understand-
able – and literally so, since they (and not just an approximation to them) are the

60
Adapted from Restrepo and Villaveces (2012).
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 21

constituents of the physical elements. They can keep their non-perceptible

status due to the fact that they are too small for perception and the many
geometrical solids that together form a phenomenon appear not as geometrical
solids, but as physical elements.
This ‘geometrical atomism’61 allows Plato to tie the plurality and changeability
of the phenomenal world to intelligible mathematical structures. He traces phys-
ical and perceptual features, like the piercing experience of the heat of fire, back to
mathematical ones, like the acuteness of the angles of the tetrahedra constituting
fire (Timaeus 61d–62a). This mathematisation of the universe, however, also
shows that the physical realm cannot be assimilated to the mathematical realm
without further ado. Plato’s attempt to do so leads to at least three problems: first,
for reasons of regularity and exhaustiveness, Plato assumes the Platonic solids to
be the basis of the elements – but there are five Platonic solids, and only four
physical elements in ancient physics; so the mathematical basis does not fit
exactly the physical requirements. Plato is aware of this problem and accordingly
gives an account of what happens to the fifth geometrical element eventually: the
dodecahedron is assumed to be the form of the world as a whole (55c), as it seems
to be close enough to a sphere, which was assumed as a form for the world body
before because of its regularity and completeness (33b). Second, while Timaeus
himself suggests that on the phenomenal level, it appears as if all four elements
can be transformed into each other (49b–c), the mathematical basis in fact
excludes earth from such transformations since cubes are made of a different
kind of triangles than tetrahedra, octahedra, and icosahedra (54b–d).
In these two cases we see that the underlying geometrical structure leads to
assumptions that are in tension with phenomenal observations or physical needs.
By contrast, the third problem is a consequence from the mathematical realm that
is in need of further explanation in the Timaeus: while the elemental changes
between fire, air, and water are accounted for in terms of the number of faces (so
that, for example, two tetrahedra which turn into one octahedron do indeed share
the same number of faces), what is problematic are the changes of the volumes
resulting from such an elemental change; for the volume of the two tetrahedra is
only half the volume of the octahedron. Given that Plato excludes any void
between the elements (58a, 59a), and elemental change is a constant feature of the
universe, an explanation would be needed why these continuous elemental
transformations do not lead to incessant changes of volumes of the universe.62

61
Atomism here implies that there is a distinction between what truly is, the geometrical bodies in
this case, and what appears – here, fire, air, etc.
62
Moreover, Aristotle in Metaphysics M, 2, 1076b objects that the Platonist position will lead to
ontological inflation: if there are separate mathematical solids, there will be separate mathemat-
ical planes, lines, points, etc.
22 Philosophy of Mathematics

Furthermore, the transfer of mathematical features to the physical realm

raises the question whether the consequences these mathematical features
bring with them should be dealt with as they are in mathematics or not – for
example, should we assume that three-dimensional bodies can be made up of
planes, as they are in mathematics? Aristotle answers with a clear no, Plato with
a clear yes. Plato makes the physical realm fit the mathematical and assumes
mathematical rules to be valid for the physical world, a view which Aristotle
contests.

1.4 Mathematical Objects as Abstractions in Aristotle

Aristotle develops a third position concerning the ontology of mathematical
objects. While he does not give us a treatise laying out in detail his own position,
we can reconstruct it from his refutation of positions that assume independently
existing mathematical entities in Metaphysics M.
In contrast to Plato’s assumption that mathematics deals with independently
and separately existing objects, for Aristotle mathematics deals with perceptible
things, since they are the only things that exist for him. However, mathemat-
icians do not deal with these sensible objects insofar as they are perceptible, for
example, insofar as they have colours and are made from a certain material, but
insofar as they have mathematically relevant properties, for example, exten-
sions such as length. While the fact that a certain building, like the Palazzo
Vecchio, has a square façade is accidental to its being a government building (it
would also work as a government building if the façade was a rectangle), it is
what the mathematician will take as object of investigation. And since it is the
best way to investigate what really interests her, the mathematician will treat
this feature accidental to the building as if it were separate (from its material,
etc.). She thus posits what is accidental as independently existing and makes her
object of investigation independent of the changes the physical thing may
undergo (or its generation and corruption).63
Aristotle’s position has three aspects – abstraction, being separate in thought,
and what is called a ‘qua-operator’. Let us briefly look at each of these.
Qua-operator: this operator is a tool commonly used by Aristotle but
especially important for his account of mathematics. It makes it clear that we
are looking at some x insofar as it is y, that is, qua y.64 And insofar as x is y, only
certain properties are relevant (usually a sub-set of the properties of x). For
example, an arithmetician looks at a turtle qua one indivisible unit (insofar as

63
For we need mathematical objects to be eternal and unchanging.
64
Lear (1982) understands it as a filter that filters out what is inessential to the discussion and thus
isolates the relevant logical space. See also Annas (1987) and Mendell (2004).
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 23

turtles can be considered as such units, they can be counted) and a geometer can
look at the same turtle qua a solid (insofar as the turtle is, for example, shaped like
a spherical segment, it will have the properties suitable for such spherical
segments). Two understandings of the qua-locution have been suggested within
Aristotelian scholarship: as looking at one specific aspect or property or as
indicating a specific approach to the subject.
Being separated in thought: with the help of the qua-operator, the mathemat-
icians can posit the mathematical object as separate in their thinking.65 This
means that the mathematical object can be defined without referring to that from
which it was abstracted (for example, the features of a sphere can be investi-
gated without any reference to the physical ball from which the sphere was
abstracted). For Aristotle, only substances can exist independently, but not
quantities (which is what he regards mathematical objects to be) nor any of
the features he considers as belonging to the other categories (such as qualities).
Nevertheless, for all mathematical purposes, mathematical objects can be
treated as if they were separate – separate from the substances they were
abstracted from as well as from the motions and changes of these substances.
Metaphysically, however, the basic things there are, are still substances, which
are the only things that can in fact exist separately on their own for Aristotle.
Treating mathematical objects as if they were separate when they really are not,
has been seen as a mere façon de parler; or even as a form of fictionalism on
Aristotle’s part.66
Abstraction: The starting point for Aristotle is the perceptible thing, from which
we then abstract certain features. This abstraction is, however, not any old lack of
attention to certain features that the mathematicians perform, but an intended
inattentiveness67 – anything that is not of mathematical interest is disregarded;
we only attend to certain features and intentionally leave out others.68
This still leaves it open, however, what exactly we take the things to be that
we abstract from and what we take the result of the abstraction to be. Are we
disregarding the matter of a physical thing or are we disregarding certain
features, such as possessing colour or being moved? And is the result a certain
object, for example, a square, or is it certain properties, such as extension or
roundness? What about those mathematical features that do not seem to be

65
‘Positing’ here does not mean stipulating something that is not there, but rather seeing something
as its own object of investigation which we encounter in the sensible world as part of a compound.
66
So Mendell (2004). On the other hand, Aristotle claims that mathematical things really exist, for
things either exist, as he says, ‘in actuality or as matter (i.e. potentially)’, and he seems to think of
mathematical things to exist potentially, in the way a statue exists in a block of marble.
67
See Annas (1987).
68
Lang (2021) calls his position that mathematics deals with abstract mathematical properties, and not
with abstract objects which are possessed by physical systems, that of an ‘Aristotelian realist’.
24 Philosophy of Mathematics

instantiated (for example, a particular angle)? And how can abstraction work in
the case of counting – can we really abstract away everything from a thing apart
from the fact that it is one thing in order to gain a unit? Or is all we need in this
case an appropriate sortal?
These points lead to two bigger questions – (a) is abstraction for Aristotle one
unified process and (b) does it require some form of idealisation? (a) Do we in all
cases abstract from the same kind of things in the same kind of process or does
abstraction mean different things in different instances? The understanding of
abstraction seems to differ with different cases, for example, if I count the turtles
in the zoo, I seem to undertake a different kind of abstraction than if I abstract
from the physical features of my turtle so as to derive a spherical segment. But if
it is not always the same kind of process, how then do we know what is the right
thing to abstract from in each case? Is it enough if this is decided by the person
counting or abstracting? (b) Idealisation may be seen as required at two possible
points in Aristotle’s account: on the one hand we may think that in order to derive
a tangent that does indeed touch the circle at only one point or a triangle whose
angles do indeed equal 180 degrees, it is not enough to abstract from matter and
other properties of physical circles and triangles, but we may also have to idealise
the slightly crooked lines to derive straight lines or perfectly curved ones and the
mathematical properties mathematicians do indeed study.69 Furthermore, there
may be cases where in fact no instantiation does indeed exist even though we can
construct them mathematically.70 In both cases it would seem mathematicians
may also have to add something to the physical world (a section of the straight
line, for example, or the angle not instantiated in the world). But if the mathem-
atician and thus her mind ‘adds’ something, is the thus gained triangle not mind-
dependent? Accordingly, with respect to the ontological status of mathematical
things, Aristotle’s account of mathematical objects has sometimes been under-
stood as a version of psychologism, and mathematics as subjective (which would
make the applicability of mathematical theorems to the natural world problematic
and may call into question the position of mathematics as a model science).
Recent scholarship on Aristotle, however, as well as Neoplatonists, have
pointed out that Aristotle nowhere claims mathematical objects to be mind-
dependent.71 And the Greek origin of our word ‘abstraction’, aphairesis, which
Aristotle for the first time uses in a technical sense, literally means ‘taking
away’.72 Accordingly, several scholars have suggested that with Aristotle we

69
Mendell (2004) calls this the ‘precision problem’. He does not think Aristotle ever explains his
solution to this problem.
70
Similarly, Hussey (1993) has pointed out that according to Aristotle there are not infinitely many
actual straight lines in the world but infinitely many in mathematics.
71
See Mendell (2004) and Proclus (1992), 12.10–16. 72 See Cleary (1985).
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 25

should talk about subtraction rather than abstraction – for him everything is
there already with the sensible things, certain features just have to be subtracted;
there is no addition that an idealisation seems to suggest. For Aristotle, what
mathematicians do is not to create something, but rather to actualize what exists
already potentially (the line has the potential to be lengthened and its crooked-
ness to be disregarded).73
Summing up, we can say that mathematical objects are not independently
existing objects for Aristotle, rather they depend on the sensible objects we
perceive; they are features of these objects that we separate in thought, but they
do not depend on our mind for their existence. It may seem ironic then that
Aristotle, for whom the objects of mathematics are much closer to sensible
objects than for Plato, is very cautious to make it clear that the construction
principles of mathematics, such as that from lines and surfaces we can construct
solids, do not hold for physical bodies which Plato in his Timaeus seems to
assume.

2 Epistemology: Mathematical Knowledge versus

Philosophical Knowledge
In this chapter we will look at different accounts of the relationship between
mathematical and philosophical knowledge and at the epistemological status of
basic propositions and deductive procedures. In the last chapter, with Philolaus,
we saw the idea that mathematical structures may be seen as a necessary
condition for knowledge, though it remained underdetermined what kind of
knowledge he had in mind. In Plato’s Meno and in Aristotle’s Posterior
Analytics mathematical knowledge seems to be used as a model for scientific
knowledge – the claim to completeness and perfect veracity and its method of
demonstration make especially geometry a paradigmatic example of a science
for philosophers. The mathematical sciences were one of the few already
established sciences outside of philosophy and probably the most prominent
and exact among them, so using them as models for scientific knowledge may
have seemed rather natural. In Plato’s Republic, however, mathematical know-
ledge, while important and central for the education of the future leaders of the
state, is clearly distinguished from the highest form of philosophical know-
ledge, namely dialectic, which is meant to work with non-hypothetical starting
points. Finally, we will also consider the role of explanations in ancient math-
ematics according to Aristotle.

73
What we may miss in order to account for mathematical objects not instantiated in the physical
realm, is an explicit claim that some abstractions can be combined to form different mathemat-
ical objects (an idea that we are used to from similar discussions in early modern times).
26 Philosophy of Mathematics

2.1 Mathematical Knowledge as a Model

Plato frequently uses the mathematical sciences as examples for secure knowledge
or exact sciences.74 In his Meno mathematical knowledge seems to be employed as
a model of real knowledge that we do not derive from the world but bring already
with us.75 We find two passages there that use geometry as a paradigm for
knowledge and inquiry, respectively. The first one (82b–86b) is better known and
shows a young Greek slave coming to find a solution to the problem of how to
double the area of a given square without any prior geometrical knowledge. Plato
introduces it as a reaction to the so-called Meno Paradox (also called Paradox of
Inquiry), the problem raised by Meno that inquiry seems to be impossible or
useless: if we do not know beforehand what we inquire, inquiry seems to be
impossible as (a) we will not know what to look for when starting our inquiry
and (b) we will not recognise it once we have stumbled upon it. And if we do
already know what we are looking for, inquiry seems unnecessary.
As a response to this seeming paradox, Plato wants to show that we do
indeed already possess knowledge of what we learn beforehand, but we have
forgotten and need to be reminded of it. Accordingly, his so-called theory of
recollection claims that our inquiries do in fact not produce new knowledge
but rather reawaken what we already know in some way; we become aware of
knowledge we already possess. The kind of knowledge Plato seems to have in
mind (or at least for which his theory seems most plausible) is what we would
call a priori knowledge.76 And the example he gives for such rekindled
knowledge is an instance of the geometrical doubling of the area of a square:
a young boy who has not been taught any geometry is given a square with an
area of four square feet, thus the length of each side being two feet. He is asked
to find the length of the side of a square that is double this area, so eight feet.
Not having any experience in mathematics, he first tries a square with double
the length of the sides and then using sides of three feet length. Eventually,
Socrates brings out the right answer from him with the help of a diagram: a
square with an area of eight feet has a side with the length of the diagonal of
the two feet square (see figure 3). This mathematical example is meant to show
how somebody without experience or training can derive new knowledge
simply by deduction.

74
For example, in Gorgias 451a–c or Protagoras 356d–357a.
75
At least this is what the back reference to the Meno in Plato’s Phaedo suggests when it is claimed
that the ability to remember correctly if questioned in the right way (which for Plato is the way to
acquire knowledge) ‘is shown most clearly if you lead them to diagrams’, i.e. to geometrical
reasoning (73b).
76
For Plato, it is a certain content of knowledge, rather than an ability or capability of reasoning
that we already possess.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 27

D
C

A B

Figure 3 Doubling the area of a square in the Meno.

In this geometrical example, we can look at the diagram of the square ABCD
and its diagonals and from this ‘see’ how to proceed. We acquire geometrical
knowledge via seeing the figure of the original square that is divided by the
diagonals so that we then can ‘count the triangles’ constituting the squares without,
however, depending on this particular drawing (we could as well simply imagine
one in our head). There seem to be a couple of problems, however, with this
example: for instance, we are explicitly told at the end that the young boy ends up
with true opinion, not yet knowledge (85c); we seem to begin with an arithmetical
question (how long is the side of a square with double the area of the two-feet
square), but end up with the boy simply pointing to the line of the diagonal; and
Socrates’ leading questions have been seen as in fact doing much more than simply
help the boy discover the knowledge already within himself.77 All these objections,
however, do not undermine the fact that Plato uses a mathematical example as a
paradigm for knowledge that can be derived a priori. Socrates’ questions may be
leading questions that prompt certain answers, but his careful layout of steps
leading to the solution of the problem ends up showing the boy’s ability to follow
a deduction or a kind of proof.78 And while the boy ends up pointing to a line, this
move from what seems to be an arithmetical question to a geometrical answer (the
77
E.g., are the two diagonals, which Socrates introduces, not a necessary pointer for the slave boy?
For their lines cut up the original small square into equal parts and thus the slave boy can count
the parts inside and is pushed in the direction of dividing up the original square.
78
See Scott (2006), chapter 9. Knorr (1975) even suggests that what we find in the Meno is what a
Pythagorean proof for the incommensurability may have looked like.
28 Philosophy of Mathematics

length of the diagonal of the original square) simply mirrors the fact that the answer
to this question has to be geometrical within the context of Greek mathematics. For
the problem of doubling the square has a geometrical solution (i.e. the diagonal) in
ancient mathematics, but no arithmetical one, since we cannot arrive at the side of
the square in question numerically within the realm of positive integers.79 But the
task of finding a square of double the area is nevertheless achieved: Socrates is
satisfied when they have reached the new square (without any indication of irony
here), and Meno and Socrates do not have to discuss first whether this is an instance
of knowledge. That the boy is seen as ending up with true opinion rather than
knowledge is explicitly claimed to rest on the fact that the insight gained is not yet
tied down in his mind (85c), but frequent questioning will tie it down and thus turn
it from true opinion to knowledge.80
While we are not given a general view of Plato’s account of mathematics
here, it is remarkable that he uses this geometrical piece of reasoning as the
prominent example of recollection in the Meno and the Phaedo and lets it serve
as a paradigm for something that is indisputably knowledge (it is knowledge
which Meno and Socrates themselves possess, so they can clearly see when the
boy goes wrong and when he has reached the right answer). The geometrical
construction allows him to show the process of inquiry and it provides the
security that we are doubtlessly dealing with a piece of knowledge,81 since the
mathematicians agree on the fact that we gain a square with double the area
from building it on the diagonal of the original square; an agreement that may be
much harder to reach on philosophical questions.
In the second geometrical passage, 86c–87b, we are presented with a math-
ematical method that is used as a model for philosophical investigation, the
hypothetical method.82 The idea is that with problems we cannot solve straight-
away, we may nevertheless make progress by spelling out possible conse-
quences for the different possible solutions. So while we may not be able to
give an answer to a particular problem, we may nevertheless say that if it is x,
then y follows and if it is w then z follows. For the issue at hand in the Meno, this

79
Socrates seems to hint at the problem of incommensurability between the diagonal and the side
of the square when he tells the boy ‘to show’ the side of the double square ‘if he cannot calculate
it’ (84a); see Knorr (1975), p. 26 and chapter 3.
80
We seem to deal with a different account of knowledge here than in the Republic, where
knowledge is set over a different realm than opinion is (the former over the intelligible, the
latter over the perceptible), while here in the Meno we can have both opinion as well as
knowledge about mathematical things and the way to Larissa. This difference in the account
of knowledge may also be part of the reason for the different view of the relationship between
mathematical and philosophical knowledge Plato seems to present in the Meno and the Republic.
81
A security presumably needed by Plato as a basis to introduce his new concept of recollection.
82
The Platonic text explicitly links this examination ‘from hypothesis’ to what geometers do. For
understanding it as the mathematical method of analysis, see Menn (2002), p. 212.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 29

means that whereas it does not seem possible to answer the question directly
whether virtue is teachable, it is possible to say that if it is knowledge, then it is
indeed teachable, but if it is not knowledge it may not be. While this method
does not as such lead to answer the question whether virtue is teachable in the
Meno – for this Meno and Socrates would first have to inquire into what virtue is
and attempt to find a definition83 – it presents a way forward and a method of
discovery.
Both geometrical passages are used for the overall interest of Plato’s dialogue
in ethical knowledge, the question what virtue is and whether it is teachable.
Geometrical knowledge is introduced in order to show how acquiring know-
ledge in general is possible and how to deal with questions that do not seem to be
answerable directly. And these passages may be seen as suggesting that geom-
etry and philosophy are similarly deductive.84 Thus these passages have been
read by some as the first inkling of the idea that philosophy can work ‘in a
geometrical manner’, more geometrico; the most literal and extensive under-
standing of this we probably find in Spinoza’s Ethics Demonstrated in
Geometrical Order.85
Let us now move on to Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, his theory of demon-
stration and account of how to organize and present the results of research as a
systematic science.86 For this, Aristotle uses the mathematical sciences to
provide him with crucial and often the most prominent examples; and it is
evident that the mathematical sciences are not only a very clear case of scientific
knowledge, but in many respects a model for him.87 While it has been argued
that the model of a science Aristotle works with is in fact not mathematics, but
biology,88 the two seem to be models in very different senses: biology is a model
science for Aristotle in the sense that he wants to establish such a science in his
own work, but it is not yet such a science when Aristotle enters the philosophical
scene; rather, it becomes such a science only with him.89 By contrast, the
mathematical sciences are already existing sciences that his audience would

83
Without clarifying first what virtue is, the two are led to what seem to be opposing conclusions
about the possibility of teaching virtue; this is, however, not due to the method as such, but rather
to the fact that without this clarification Socrates and Meno seem to find support for understand-
ing virtue as knowledge as well as not as knowledge.
84
See Broadie (2021), p. 191.
85
In early modern times, this style was seen as taking up the methodical way we find in Euclid’s
Elements.
86
See also Section 3. 87 See also Cleary (1985), p. 18.
88
See, for example, Lenox (2021), who points out that Aristotle’s History of Animals 491a7–14
suggests that his biological project is organized in accordance with the theory of the Posterior
Analytics. And in general, Aristotle’s own biology has been seen as fitting the model of
demonstrative knowledge of the Posterior Analytics very closely.
89
Which also Lennox (2021) seems to admit when he speaks about biology being a science only
from Aristotle onwards.
30 Philosophy of Mathematics

be familiar with.90 And we should not forget that the mathematical sciences were
one of the few already established sciences outside of philosophy and probably
the most rigorous among them. Aristotle can draw from the mathematical sci-
ences in order to show to his audience, for example, the role principles play, the
classification of principles, and, more generally, the way a deductive science
works; they are a model he can refer to for how a science should be organized and
set out.91 This does not necessarily mean mathematics is a science that philosophy
should emulate in its form (given that geometry works with constructions, this
does not even seem possible), but in its systematicity and rigor.
At the very beginning of his Posterior Analytics, Aristotle takes up the idea
from the Meno that learning requires prior knowledge: ‘All teaching and all
learning of an intellectual kind proceed from pre-existent knowledge’ (71a1f.).
Talking about ‘intellectual learning’ here, Aristotle makes room for knowledge
by perception, while Plato talks about knowledge full stop.92 For Aristotle, there
are two ways in which we must already have knowledge at the beginning of an
inquiry: of some things we must already believe that they are, of others we must
grasp what the things spoken about are. The examples he gives for these kinds of
prior knowledge are, as with Plato, mathematical, but also logical:

For example, of the fact that everything is either asserted or denied truly, we
must believe that it is the case; of the triangle, that it means this; and of the
unit both (both what it means and that it is) (71a13–16).

We see that Aristotle first gives a logical example – of the principle of the
excluded middle we must know that it holds, in such a way that everything is
either asserted or denied. And then he switches to two mathematical examples:
of a triangle we must know what it means (but not that it exists, since it is not the
most basic element of geometry and its existence can be proven by construc-
tion). And of the unit we must both know what it means and that it is since it is
the most basic item in arithmetic, namely the element of numbers. For Aristotle,
too, there must be some form of knowledge prior to any teaching and learning.
Mathematical knowledge and logical principles, such as those referred to in the
passage just quoted, demonstrate this. For Aristotle, we know certain things
universally before we learn, but we do not know them simpliciter. As an

90
Furthermore, it has often been claimed that at least a good part of Aristotle’s Analytics was
already written while he was still a member of the Academy (see Barnes (1993), p. xiv), while he
seems to have started his mature biological work only after he had left Athens and had moved to
Lesbos (see Balme (1987), p. 13, though he claims this especially for the History of Animals).
91
See Mendell (2004), §2: Aristotle’s discussions on the best format for a deductive science in the
Posterior Analytics reflect the practice of contemporary mathematics as taught and practiced in
Plato’s Academy; see also McKirahan (1992), p. 133.
92
In the Republic ‘perceptual knowledge’ would not count as knowledge for Plato, but as opinion.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 31

example for knowing something universally but not simpliciter he gives us a

mathematical example concerning triangles: ‘you already knew that every
triangle has angles equal to two right-angles; but you got to know that this
figure in the semicircle is a triangle at the same time as you were being led to the
conclusion’ (71a19–21).
Both Plato and Aristotle use mathematics for showing that we do not get into
Meno’s paradox. In Metaphysics 1025b4–7, Aristotle uses mathematics and
medicine as examples with the help of which he generalizes his inferences for
all sciences. And in De caelo 306a23 ff. he attacks certain atomistic accounts by
claiming they assert that not all bodies are divisible and thus come into conflict
with ‘our most accurate sciences, namely the mathematical’.

2.2 The Distinction between Mathematical Knowledge

and the Highest Form of Philosophical Knowledge in Plato
While at least in some texts Plato and Aristotle understand mathematics as
potentially an ideal science, this does not mean, however, that the two do not
also sometimes criticise mathematics as it is practised at their time for falling
short of such a science.93 And in his Republic Plato makes it clear that mathem-
atics is not the highest form of knowledge. The mathematical sciences are very
important to turn the soul towards the intelligibles there, but the philosophical
discipline of dialectic, which deals with the first principles of what there is, is seen
as a more fundamental science.
This is probably made most explicit in Plato’s so-called example of the line,
which is part of a series of three well-known examples in the Republic to
explain what is and can be known – the example of the sun, of the line, and of
the cave. The line example shows a fourfold division of the realm of what is, as
well as of the cognitive states with which we can access these different things;
thus it closely links ontology and epistemology.94 And it places mathematics
clearly below dialectics – the lower ontological status of mathematical objects
goes hand in hand with a lower epistemological status of mathematical
knowledge.
This example asks us to think of a line divided first into two sections – one
standing for the visible realm, the other for the intelligible realm (509d8), the
first is what is opinable, the second what is knowable. Each of the two sections is
then divided again into two sections, so that we end up with four sections in total
(see Figure 4).95 Of the visible realm, we are given objects first: to the first

93
See also Section 3. 94 At least on many interpretations of the line.
95
They are explicitly said to be four unequal sections – how exactly to understand these differences in
length of the individual sections is a matter of dispute in the literature; see Broadie (2021). I have
used one interpretation for the drawing here – letting the length of the line segment correspond
32 Philosophy of Mathematics

Ontology Epistemology

INTELLIGIBLE REALM first principles understanding

Forms (noêsis)

KNOWLEDGE
from hypothesis to first
principles
dialectic

mathematical thought
objects (dianoia)
from hypothesis to
conclusions
arithmetic, geometry
VISIBLE REALM

perceptible things belief

OPINION
(originals of the (pistis)
images)

images imagination
(eikasia)
(shadows, reflections)

Figure 4 The divided line in Plato’s Republic.

subsection belong all kinds of images, such as shadows and reflections in water;
while to the second subsection belong all the originals of these images, that is,
perceptible living things as well as artificial ones. Of the intelligible realm, the
first section uses the originals of the visible world as images (in the way we use a
diagram in geometry or a bronzen sphere as a visualisation of a sphere as such)
and proceeds from hypothesis to conclusions; while in the second and last sub-
section we proceed from hypothesis to first principles without using images; this
is the realm of first principles and Forms. These two sections of the intelligible
realm are not characterised by different objects so much as by different
methods. In the following, we are told that the people using the method
described in the first sub-section of the intelligible realm are those dealing
with geometry and arithmetic (510c2–3), and that they use as images the lines
they draw. Their claims are, however, not about those lines drawn, but rather
about ‘the square itself’ and ‘the diagonal itself’ (510d7–8). Of the second-
subsection, which goes to unhypothetical first principles, we are told that its

directly to the amount of clarity. But the only thing relevant for us is that the ratio of the different
sections is in some way done according to the relative amount of clarity and opacity of each section
(509d). The four sections display a ratio not only of A:B=C:D, but also of A:C=B:D.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 33

objects – first principles and Forms – are grasped by dialectic. We access the
mathematical things by thought (dianoia), but the Forms by understanding
(noêsis); while belief (pistis) is of perceptible things and imagination (eikasia)
of images (511c5–e4). Understanding and thought together form the realm of
knowledge, belief and imagination the realm of opinion.
While the example of the line does not discuss mathematics in any detail, we
can derive at least four important points, epistemological as well as ontological
ones, from it for our project:

1) The true objects of mathematics are things like ‘the square itself’ and the
‘diagonal itself’ – the objects the mathematicians are concerned with do
really exist, but only in the intelligible realm, not in the perceptible one.
They are what it means to be a square, not this or that particular square.
2) The mathematicians use what is perceptible only as images for the intelli-
gible objects they are really talking about.
3) The way mathematicians proceed is from hypothesis to conclusions without
deriving first principles.
4) Since the mathematicians do not turn to first principles, but start from given
axioms, their activity is not concerned with the most fundamental things in
the way dialectic is.

In the Republic, dialectic is understood to be more fundamental than mathem-

atics, since it deals with the first principles of what there is. Mathematics is
situated below dialectics because it cannot justify its principles96 in the way
dialectics allegedly can – and perhaps also because geometry relies on the
perceptible world for its operations, as when diagrams are used for proofs.97
This also suggests that dialectic and mathematics do not provide knowledge of
the very same type98 and probably that knowledge of the principles and
knowledge of what is derived from principles differ not only in status but also
in kind; but Plato says very little here that would allow us to flesh out these
epistemological differences in any detail.
While mathematical knowledge is not the highest form of knowledge, it is
nevertheless crucial according to the Republic in order to turn the soul around,
from the perceptible realm to the intelligible one (521d). This turning requires a
very long education in mathematics for the future rulers of the state, the so-
called philosopher queens and kings of the kallipolis (521c–535a): as small
children, they are taught music, poetry, and are engaged in physical exercises;
after which a ten-year period of training in different mathematical sciences

96 97
Resting on axioms that simply have to be assumed. See Section 3.
98
Even though mathematics is ‘dreaming’ of the objects of dialectic, as we will see later.
34 Philosophy of Mathematics

ensues. In each case the real interest is for the pure version of this branch of
mathematics. But in order to show that acquiring these different kinds of
mathematical knowledge does not make students useless for practical tasks,
the fact that there are applied branches of mathematics is also employed. First,
arithmetic is taught; explicitly not for the purpose of commerce (525c–d), but as
the basis for order and for all sciences. It is seen to be required for warfare; but
most of all in order to lead the philosophical mind to the one and numbers as
such and thus to intelligible things. Then geometry is introduced, not just so that
the students will be prepared for practical purposes, like setting up a camp or
dealing with different formations of an army, but most of all so that its students
turn towards what truly is. Within the systematic layout of the sciences, solid
geometry – stereometry – would be next, but according to the Socrates of the
Republic this is a subject that has not really been explored so far. Given that we
do find it in Euclid’s Elements, scholars have suggested that this claim in Plato’s
middle period represents a time before Theaetetus had done his work on the
Platonic solids that turn up in Plato’s later work, in the Timaeus.
With the last two subjects, astronomy and harmonics, Socrates turns to math-
ematical subjects that are per se practical and thus closer to the perceptible realm.
But in the education of the future philosophers, they should be taken up in as pure
a form as possible, so that astronomy ‘leaves the things in the sky alone’ (530b–c).
True astronomy should not be done as it is ‘currently’ practised – that is, as
concerned with the visible movements of the heavenly bodies – but as concerned
with the intelligible model of what we see in the sky, that is, in the way geometry
is.99 It is a kind of ideal kinematics that is only imperfectly expressed in the visible
heavens in time and space (as the irregularities of the motions of the heavenly
bodies show, such as the changing ratio of day and night). Similarly, harmonics
should not be concerned with the audible tones so much as with the pure
mathematics belonging to it (531a–c).
A systematic connection between these mathematical sciences – arithmetic,
geometry, astronomy, and harmonics – is already claimed by the Pythagoreans,
who call them sister-sciences. But in contrast to the Pythagoreans, Plato’s
Republic is concerned with a pure form of these sciences that deals with the
perceptible realm as little as possible and should thus guide the students from
the perceptible to the intelligible realm. According to Plato, this path from the
perceptible to the intelligible is very difficult for us, and mathematics has the
power to lead us along this path. Learning to focus on intelligible things from
mathematics is crucial for the ascent to philosophy for the middle Plato.

99
Which should take the visible simply as illustration.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 35

But these mathematical sciences are not the highest sciences in the Republic.
The coping stone is dialectic. The Republic points out that we cannot expect a full
account of dialectic here (532e–533a); nor will we get one in the other dialogues
of Plato. But the Republic makes it clear that dialectic is the journey out of the
cave, that is, the process through which we get to understand what each thing is in
itself and what the Good itself is, the highest Form of Being. This is done solely
by means of argument (dialegesthai). The difference between dialectic and
mathematics, at least in its pure form that should be used in the education of
the guardians, is not so much that the later uses perception, as the example of the
line may seem to suggest. But rather their respective treatment of the first
principles, which according to Plato is such that dialectic is the only

inquiry that systematically attempts to grasp with respect to each thing itself
what the being of it is, for all the other crafts are concerned with human
opinions and desires, with growing or construction, or with the care of
growing or constructed things. And as for the rest, I mean geometry and the
subjects that follow it, we described them as to some extent grasping what is,
for we saw that, while they do dream about what is, they are unable to
command a waking view of it as long as they make use of hypotheses that
they leave untouched and that they cannot give any account of. What mech-
anism could possibly turn any agreement into knowledge when it begins with
something unknown and puts together the conclusion and the steps in
between from what is unknown? (533b–c).

Dialectic is the only systematic knowledge inquiring the being of each thing,
while almost all of the other so-called crafts deal with becoming (growing,
construction). Mathematics has a special status in that it is at least ‘dreaming’ of
what truly is; but the problem is that the mathematicians start from a hypothesis
of which they cannot give an account. Thus they base their discipline on
something ‘unknown’; while dialectic allegedly gives an account of these first
principles. Plato here even goes so far as to claim that this means that the
mathematical sciences are not sciences in the strict sense (533c–d); rather, they
are something ‘clearer than opinion, but darker than knowledge’.
Also other authors have seen mathematics as a kind of essential propaedeutic.
Plato’s contemporary, the rhetorician Isocrates, for example, recommends
mathematics to make children quicker for learning other subjects and in order
to get used to the fact that the process of acquiring knowledge demands hard
thought and precision.100 But for Plato, mathematics achieves much more than
this by training our mind to deal with the intelligible, instead of the perceptible.
And some interpreters, like Burnyeat, have even claimed that mathematical

100
Isocrates 15 (Antidosis), 265; cf. also Heath (1921), p. 21.
36 Philosophy of Mathematics

structures for Plato are ‘a constitutive part of ethical understanding’,101 which

includes at least two ideas: first, central concepts of the mathematical sciences,
such as unity, proportion, and concord, are also central for the political realm so
that the structures studied in mathematics ‘are the very structures that the
philosopher-rulers will seek to establish in the social order of the ideal city
and in the souls of its citizens’. And second, since mathematical theorems are
unqualifiedly true in every context, which is what Plato wants to show for the
realm of ethical value, it articulates objective values.
Let us finally look at the kind of explanation mathematics provides according
to ancient philosophers.

2.3 The Possibility of Explanation in the Mathematical Sciences

In contemporary philosophy of mathematics, one central epistemological ques-
tion concerns the possibility of explanations in mathematics. More exactly
speaking, it is debated whether we find within mathematics (a) real explanations
(and not just non-explanatory demonstrations) and (b) explanations for the
sciences.102 We seem to get into similar worries if we look at Aristotle’s account
of scientific understanding that closely ties knowledge to causes, as we can see
from the following passage:

We think we know a thing simpliciter (and not in the sophistic fashion

accidentally) when we think we understand both that the cause (aitia), because
of which the object is, is its cause, and that it is not possible for this to be
otherwise. (Post. An. I, 1, 71b9–12)

We see that knowledge is defined as understanding the cause of a thing to be this

cause and to be necessarily this cause. So there are two conditions for under-
standing something simpliciter, (a) knowing the cause and (b) this being tied to
some form of necessity.103 Given that knowledge and understanding is tied to
causes here,104 we may be worried that such an account does not fit mathematics
at all, as causes seem to belong to the area of the natural sciences only. How can
mathematics explain anything if knowledge and understanding is of causes for
Aristotle?105

101
Burnyeat (2000). By contrast, according to Broadie (2021) the future rulers need these ten years
of mathematical training because it is so hard to turn away from the perceptible to the
intelligible realm for us.
102
See Mancosu et al. (2023) for a discussion.
103
The necessity can either be taken to indicate that ‘a understands X only if X cannot be otherwise’
or as ‘a understands X only if a knows that X cannot be otherwise’.
104
E.g., we understand a lunar eclipse for Aristotle if we know the cause of its coming about (we
know that the interposition of the earth leads to a deprivation of light from the moon; 90a).
105
Compare already Proclus (1992), 158–159. Proclus as well as Simplicius claim that for Aristotle
mathematics is not an explanatory science; see also Harari (2008).
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 37

First we need to point out that the Greek word usually translated as ‘causes’,
aitia, is much broader than our usual understanding of a cause. For Aristotle,
aitia are not only efficient causes, but explicitly include formal, material, and
teleological causes, as he makes clear in Physics II, 3; they are better understood
as reasons or ‘becauses’. Accordingly, Barnes (1993) translates them as
‘explanations’ rather than ‘causes’. Aristotle’s main point here is that know-
ledge includes having a grasp of why something is the case.106
Aristotle claims that arithmetic, geometry, and optics carry out their demon-
strations through what he calls the first figure in his syllogistic, which he takes to
be especially scientific, and belong to the sciences that inquire into the reason why
(Posterior Analytics I, 14, 79a17–24). Accordingly, he assumes that there is some
explanation within mathematics itself.107 But does mathematics also provide
explanations for the sciences? Here we need to remember that at the time in
question, physics and the natural sciences were not mathematicised in the way
they are today. However, Aristotle himself introduces mathematical concepts into
the realm of physics in order to develop central concepts further.108 And that
mathematics can provide knowledge of ‘becauses’ in the sciences for Aristotle, he
makes clear with examples like the wound in his Posterior Analytics (79a14–16):
‘it is for the doctors to know the facts that curved wounds heal more slowly, and
for the geometers to know the reason why’.109
While the doctor will know that a round wound will take longer to heal, a
mathematician can explain the reason behind this, presumably, because a round-
shaped wound has the biggest surface in relation to its circumference.
So mathematicians can know the reasons why and thus provide explanations
also for more empirical sciences. But what makes mathematics a model of a
science is its employment of deductions. While deductive structures are first
found paradigmatically in mathematics, it is philosophers who then raise ques-
tions about the workings of deductions and develop the notion of deductions. As
we will see in the next section, it is especially completeness and universality
where philosophers started to question the exact workings of the deductive

106
Harari (2008) argues that the explicit question whether we find explanations in mathematics
rests on a conceptual shift in later antiquity leading to a restriction of the understanding of
causes to what actively brings about an effect. Since according to Aristotle, mathematical
objects are not substances in the strict sense and thus cannot actively bring about effects, it
seemed to the later ancient tradition that mathematics is not an explanatory science.
107
We leave it to the side here whether he and we would make the distinction between explanatory
and non-explanatory demonstrations in the same way.
108
Most prominently continuity; see Section 4.2
109
As for applied sciences, we are told that ‘it is for the empirical scientist to know the fact and for the
mathematician to know the reason why; for the latter have the demonstrations of the explanations’,
Post. An. I, 13, 79a2–4. So here the applied science establishes the fact but it is pure mathematics
which with its demonstration establishes the cause or the reason why; see also Harari (2008), p. 147.
38 Philosophy of Mathematics

systems they gained from mathematicians. But they also asked more general
questions, for example, what can be used as starting points for our deductions;
what guarantees that truth is indeed preserved in such a deduction; what does their
validity rest on; or whether the principle of non-contradiction is the only essential
law for such deductions.110 The mathematicians, by contrast, seem to take these
features of deductions for granted; we do not find any meta-reflections on
deductions in Euclid or earlier texts.
Philosophers also ask for reasons why deductibility works at all. For Aristotle,
deductibility rests on the form of the system. For him, a deduction allows that from
some premises a conclusion containing new information can be derived by neces-
sity and nothing external has to be relied upon for the necessity to hold.111 The
validity of the conclusion simply rests on the very form of the deduction. If we have
two premises of the form ‘all As are Bs’ and ‘all Bs are Cs’, the inference that ‘all
As are Cs’ is valid, no matter what the content.112 It is this independence from any
concrete empirical content that makes deductive structures so central not only for
mathematics, but also for logic. And it is in Aristotle’s logic that the basic working
of deductions as we find it in mathematics is first explicitly investigated. So, it is to
the role of deductions that we will now turn in the next section.

3 Methodology
This section is interested in mathematical methods that were of interest for
philosophers. This encompasses methods for making new discoveries,113 as
well as for structuring already acquired bodies of knowledge. Most prominently,
mathematical deductions were seen as paradigmatic for philosophical proofs.
After having looked at deductions in general, this section will look at one method
in particular, namely the development of reductio ad absurdum proofs as an
example which was equally fruitful in mathematics and philosophy. For a fuller
picture, we would have to look also at methodological innovations in dialectics
and the sophistic movement, but we will not have space to do so here.114

3.1 Mathematical Deductions as Paradigmatic

for Philosophical Proofs
Ancient philosophers took mathematics as a paradigm for a strict demonstrative
science, as may best be seen from Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, which is the
first attempt in Western thought to give an account of the way in which scientific

110
See Knorr (1975), p. 4. 111 See Section 3.
112
The truth of the conclusion is simply a function of the system.
113
The second geometrical passage in the Meno already gave us a taste of this.
114
See Szabo (2004) and Mueller (1969).
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 39

results should be structured, organized into an intelligible whole, and presented.

According to the Posterior Analytics, sciences should be properly expounded in
deductive systems.115 That is, the body of truth of each science should be
exhibited as a sequence of theorems derived from a few postulates or axioms.
The axiomatisation is to be formalised in the sense that it is formulated in a well-
defined language, and its arguments should proceed according to a set of logical
rules.116 Today it is sometimes discussed whether mathematics is a science – in
case the natural sciences are taken as paradigm and the lack of dealing with
empirical evidence is held against mathematics being a science in this sense.
But if we think of science as a systematic body of knowledge, mathematics can
not only be seen as a paradigm for this, but also was the first developed science
in Western thought. Accordingly, when Aristotle discusses how to structure and
systematize knowledge as a science in his Posterior Analytics, he uses math-
ematical sciences as crucial examples.117 Aristotle, who lived presumably
roughly fifty years before Euclid, also provides us with a glimpse of the extent
to which the idea of an axiomatized science had already been sketched by
mathematicians before Euclid.118
Two points are especially important for an axiomatised science: the prin-
ciples or axioms which serve as starting points for proofs and the rules of
deduction. We will deal with the starting points in Section 4, and with the rules
of deduction here.

3.1.1 Rules of Deductions

Mathematics could be seen as paradigmatically displaying a deductive structure –

both within a single proof and in the way in which the genre of mathematical
Elements sets out the whole of mathematical knowledge in such a way that each
proposition only builds on the basic principles and the preceding propositions
(but not on succeeding ones). We can see the deductive structure in mathematics
in several propositions in Euclid already from the surface grammar which give a
general conditional along the following lines: ‘if x (and y), then z has to hold’.119
So from a given starting point it is shown that something else follows

115
Something we do not find in Babylon and Egypt; see von Fritz (1955), pp. 13–14.
116
In Posterior Analytics I, 12 Aristotle points out that paralogisms are rare in mathematics, since they
depend on ambiguity in the middle terms, and ambiguities are easily detectable in mathematics.
Mathematics uses what in informal talk we can understand as a well-formulated language.
117
Aristotle also uses other sciences, such as medicine and biology; but the mathematical sciences
are the most important examples for already existing sciences displaying the deductive systems
he is interested in.
118
See Heath (1921), pp. 338–341 for mathematical proofs in Aristotle that we do not find in Euclid.
119
See, e.g., I, 4, 6, or 8. For a detailed contrast with modern standards of deduction, see Mueller
(1969), p. 297.
40 Philosophy of Mathematics

A E

B D
C

Figure 5 Euclid, Elements I, 32.

necessarily. For example, in Elements I, 32 we find the following: ‘In any

triangle, if one of the sides is produced, then the exterior angle equals the sum
of the two interior and opposite angles, and the sum of the three interior angles of
the triangle equals two right angles.’120 So here the premises we start out with is
that we have a triangle ABC, one side of which gets extended (the side BC is
produced to D; see Figure 5). And from this it is then shown that something else
follows by necessity, namely that the angle ACD equals the sum of the two
interior and opposite angles CAB and ABC and that the sum of the three interior
angles ABC, BCA, and CAB equals two right angles. Nothing external comes in
here. Solely from what is given and done,121 prior propositions (I, 13, I, 29, and I,
31), and some basic principles (such as the definition of a triangle), we necessar-
ily derive at what was meant to be shown.
Scholars also talk about ‘deductions’ with respect to Parmenides’ poem, fragment
8, where Parmenides lists the characteristics (sêmata) of what truly is, before he
‘deduces’ them. They are probably the oldest ‘deductions’ we find in philosophy,
and we may think that Aristotle could have looked at Parmenides as a model for
deductions.122 What seems to have made mathematical deductions more attractive
than the Parmenidean one for Aristotle are two facts. First, Parmenides’ deductions
work negatively: by showing that not-F does not fit with what has been established
before, they are meant to demonstrate that F has to be true. For example, it is shown
that none of the conditions hold that could make what-fundamentally-is inhomo-
geneous; thus what-fundamentally-is has to be homogeneous.123 We will talk about
a specific form of such indirect proofs later. But for deductions as such, Parmenides’
fragments are not a straightforward example. Second, mathematical deductions are

120
Here we do also have the surface grammar being a conditional (ean). Often, however, the
surface grammar in Greek is not a conditional; and the so-called problems in Euclid’s text also
have a different structure, such as ‘for all x, there can be constructed a c such that … ’. Most of
the times we can, however, translate Euclid’s theorems into such conditionals.
121
What is done in a construction, when some a is applied to some b, is also important.
122
We may also find deductions in the context of rhetoric, sophistry, oratory, and other places, but
this is later and less scientific.
123
For a more detailed account, see Sattler (2019).
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 41

used in a systematic way to build a whole science, as we find it in Euclid’s Elements

(and presumably to some extent also in the Elements writings available before
Euclid). Parmenides’s deductions, by contrast, do not so much build a systematic
science as give arguments for the different characteristics of what-fundamentally-is.
Accordingly, it is no surprise that Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics refers to
mathematics but not to Parmenides’ poem as a model for a deductive method.124
Hence, we may claim that our philosophical understanding and realisation of
deduction was originally shaped by mathematics.
But it is a philosopher, again Aristotle in laying out his logical project, who
is the first thinker attempting to define what a deduction is, when in his Topics
I, 1, 100a25–27 he claims that ‘a deduction is an argument in which, certain
things being laid down, something other than these necessarily comes about
through them.’125 The word Aristotle uses here for what is translated as
‘deduction’ is syllogismos – and we are dealing with valid and informative
deductions in Aristotle. The Greek term syllogismos was originally used for
reasoning, and in its general form this Aristotelian definition also holds for
mathematical inferences. Indeed, it seems that such deductions were first
perfected by the mathematicians. Euclid does not talk about syllogismoi in
his Elements, nor does he use the common verb syllogizesthai. But in the
course of presenting a proof, he commonly uses inferential language –
particles expressing consequence,126 and verbs for inferring or deducing127 –
vocabulary used in ways that indicate what we can characterise as deductions
according to Aristotle’s definition.
Aristotle’s general characterisation of syllogismos and his understanding of
proofs as demonstrative arguments fits well with the mathematics of his time and
Euclid. His narrower understanding of syllogisms, however, is subject to clearly
defined restrictions,128 as his Analytics makes clear, that do not hold
124
Even if today we may think from a logical point of view that a mathematical proof is a
‘(rigorous) informal proof’, see Horsten (2022).
125
Aristotle gives almost verbatim the same definition in Prior Analytics I.2, 24b18–20. For
possible differences between Aristotle’s syllogismoi and modern deductions, see Barnes
(1993), p. 83.
126
Such as gar and ara.
127
Such as deiknumi or epilogizomai, for example, in X, proposition 62, or ago and sunago in V, 25
or XIII, 11. Also nouns can express an inferential sense, for example, in X, 4 the Greek word
‘porisma’, which is usually translated as ‘corollary’, makes it clear that what follows is a
deduction from a previous demonstration.
128
Aristotelian syllogisms are inferences with two premises that are categorical propositions,
which lead to a categorical proposition as a conclusion. The premises have only one term in
common, the so-called middle term, which is either subject or predicate of each premise.
The positions of the middle term in each premise lead to different arrangements which
Aristotle calls ‘figures’. The premise in which the predicate of the conclusion is introduced
is called the major premise, the one in which the subject is introduced is called the minor
premise.
42 Philosophy of Mathematics

for mathematics. We also do not find full-blown attempts to reconstruct mathem-

atical proofs syllogistically.129 This does not mean, however, that mathematics is
not a model science for Aristotle. After all, also Aristotle’s own natural sciences,
his physical and biological works in the way they have come down to us, are not
as such presented in syllogistic form. And Aristotle’s Physics Book Z has been
seen as structured according to a mathematical treatise.130
Deductive structures as developed in mathematics were seen as a model by
philosophers.131 And we may be tempted to call early Greek geometry and
arithmetic not only deductive systems but full-blown axiomatized systems. We
should, however, keep in mind that axiomatised systems today are deductively
closed and rigorous, like the Peano system. Ancient geometry and arithmetic in
the form we know them from Euclid are not complete132 and not universal to the
degree we usually assume: also Euclid’s Elements, which is a systematic
compilation of the mathematical knowledge of his time, displays deductive
gaps even at the very basic level133 and is thus not complete – many things are
simply presupposed but not stated, such as the fact that two lines do not enclose
an area;134 and operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and
division of magnitudes are used without them, or the laws they follow, ever
being characterised, let alone defined.135 And they do not display full univer-
sality, which can be seen, for example, in the fact that we find parallel proofs of
cases which seem easily universalisable.136
Keeping this restriction in mind, we may even think that ancient mathematics
of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE is a far cry from contemporary axiomatised
systems. It is, nevertheless, a central predecessor to such systems,137 and it was
the one ‘exact’ science that philosophers like Aristotle could look to for laying

129
We may understand Posterior Analytics 94a28–34 as an attempt to reconstruct a tiny part of a
mathematical proof syllogistically.
130
See Jope (1972).
131
For biology as model science for Aristotle in the sense of fitting the model of demonstrative
knowledge of the Posterior Analytics very closely, but yet a project fully established only with
Aristotle, see Section 2.1.
132
By completeness I understand that every item possesses its place in the system, none is missing,
and all parts are clearly connected.
133
See, for example, the different understandings of equality and congruence we find in Elements I,
4; see de Risi (2021), p. 315.
134
See Heath (1956), vol. I, p. 232 and Proclus (1992), 196, 21.
135
But there have been attempts to do a full axiomatization of Euclid I–IV in the twentieth century
by Tarski and Mumia.
136
See Mueller (1974), who on p. 43 names as examples VIII, 11 and 12; VI, 9 and 15; III, 5 and 6.
137
According to Netz (1999), a small and well-formulated language makes inspection of the entire
universe of mathematics possible, and in this way ancient mathematics may be closer to the
closed set of rules modern proof theory employs than is usually given credit to anything going
on before Frege.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 43

down rules for exact sciences.138 Given that mathematical propositions rely only
on definitions, postulates, and common notions and the theorems established
beforehand, ancient mathematics displays a degree of internal connectedness139
that is much harder to achieve in philosophy. While the discussion of mathematics
in philosophical texts shows that mathematics is frequently taken as a paradigmatic
science, it is the points of universality and completeness that philosophers ultim-
ately either raise as concerns or attempt to improve on in their philosophy.
As for completeness, we find that Plato in his Republic suggests that, in contrast
to dialectics, mathematics cannot give a foundation to its axioms and thus is
incomplete in this sense (see Section 2.2). And for Aristotle it is his own logical
system that is complete in the sense of accounting for all valid inferences and forms
a closed system (see Prior Analytics I, 23); he seems to have used mathematics as a
model for deductive systems so far, but attempted to improve it in this respect.
While the importance of universality is stressed for deductions by Aristotle
with the help of a geometrical example, as we can see in Prior Analytics I, 24,
41b13–22, it seems to be put in doubt by the role of geometrical constructions,
and that means necessarily imperfect drawings and diagrams, for mathematical
proofs. The fact that ancient mathematical deductions work with the help of
constructions is essential for mathematical proofs at the time we are investigat-
ing in Greece. They cannot immediately be used by other axiomatised sciences
and philosophy.140 For example, Elements I, 4 starts the deduction with ‘Let
there be two triangles, ABC, DEF, having the two sides, AB, AC, equal to the
two sides, DE, DF, respectively … .’ and either proceeds with a drawing or
expects us to do a drawing in order to follow the proof.141 Accordingly, the
question presents itself what role these constructions play exactly.

3.1.2 The Role of Diagrams, Drawings, and Constructions

In proposition I, 32, usually a diagram of a triangle of the kind shown above is

used for the proof. And constructions are in general used in Euclid’s
propositions.142 This has given rise to two questions for philosophers: first, do

138
And Euclid was seen as a paradigm for rigorous mathematical reasoning until the nineteenth
century; see Mueller (1969), p. 289.
139
In the sense that there is an immediate and clear connection between all parts, which is one
aspect of completeness.
140
Other sciences that also use drawings in an essential way, such as anatomy, are later disciplines,
not yet around at the time we are focusing on (even if dissections were presumably made earlier
in ancient Greece; see Aristotle Posterior Analytics 98a2).
141
There are not many diagrams transmitted to us in manuscripts but a couple; see Netz (1999).
142
This holds true of all the ‘geometrical’ books; in Book V, in which Euclid deals in general with
proportions, and in his arithmetic Books, VII–IX, numbers and proportions are depicted with
the help of lines.
44 Philosophy of Mathematics

the proofs in fact rely on these constructions and what would the consequences
of such a dependence be; and second, do these constructions also give us
existence proofs? Let us start with the first question.
Among modern historians of mathematics there is no consensus whether
ancient mathematical proofs depended for their intelligibility on diagrams. For
Netz, text and diagram cannot be taken apart as they make no sense without each
other.143 By contrast, Acerbi has argued that the diagram can always be recon-
structed from the proposition. And Mendell has pointed out that while Acerbi’s
claim is logically true if the theorem is true and it is a good proof, we also find
false diagrams in manuscripts and people failing to reconstruct an appropriate
diagram.144
The first ancient thinker to raise a potential problem with the mathematical
practise of drawing diagrams for their proofs seems to have been Protagoras.
According to a passage in Aristotle’s Metaphysics B, 997b35–998a4,
Protagoras objected to the geometers that the circle touches the ruler not in a
point, as the geometer assumes. Aristotle’s report does not extend any further,
but presumably, Protagoras’ claim was that a circle drawn in the sand or on a
wax tablet or on papyrus will touch a line in more than one point. In any case,
Protagoras seems to have tried to refute the geometers by pointing out that their
geometrical propositions do not hold of the drawings they in fact draw and that
they are thus speaking falsely.
In addition to the problem that the drawings possess features that differ from
those required for the proof in an essential way and thus are ‘false’ features, there
are two further problems that the reliance of Greek mathematics on constructions
for their proofs can raise for philosophers interested in deductions: First, while
deductions are meant to be purely logical, independent of the perceptible world,
mathematical proofs seem to rely in fact on something perceptible, the drawings.
Secondly, while deductions are meant to give general conclusions, the usage of
constructions seems to make them rely on individuals – this triangle drawn here –
rather than on universals.145 How do ancient mathematicians derive a merely
logical structure producing universal results, if they start from individual
examples? How can truth be preserved if we prove via individual instances that
are full of imperfectness and seemingly depend on something we construct?
All three potential problems – drawings possess false features, are sensible, and
are individual – are part of the background of Plato’s discussion of the language of
mathematics in his Republic. There Plato seems to criticise mathematicians for

143
See especially Netz (1999), pp. 12 and 26.
144
Acerbi (2020); Mendell in oral communication.
145
Netz (1999) suggests that generality was achieved through extendability and repeatability of the
proof.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 45

using language that makes mathematics sound like a practical art; they use a
language full of action words and give the impression as if geometrical objects
came into being through the process of geometrical construction. In order to deal
with these problems, Plato distinguishes what the language of the mathematicians
expresses from what mathematics is really about.146 And for Plato what mathem-
atics is really concerned with is knowledge, which is immutable and stable and thus
cannot depend on constructions. While the geometers talk as if the objects of their
investigations were the visible drawings, this is only a façon de parler; their real
objects are things like ‘the square itself’ or ‘the diagonal itself’ (510d–e); the
constructions are just used as images. Accordingly, it seems that while Plato may be
critical about the language used by the mathematicians in practise, he is not worried
by Protagoras’ claim that drawings possess false properties, and the perceptible and
individual nature of constructions is unimportant given that, if correctly under-
stood, they are simply tools the mathematicians use in order to grasp their real
objects. Diagrams in geometry are only illustrations and do not belong to the
essence of geometry.147
Similarly, Aristotle’s answer to the problem raised is that geometers do not in fact
rely on individuals: in Posterior Analytics 76b41–77a2 he reports the opinion that
‘the geometer speaks falsely when he says that a line which is not a foot long is a foot
long or a drawn line which is not straight is straight.’ Against this opinion, Aristotle
points out that ‘the geometer does not conclude anything from the fact that the line
which he himself has described is thus and so; rather, he relies on what this line
shows.’ So Aristotle clarifies that while geometers use individual and perceptible
lines in their proofs, they do not conclude anything on the basis that this line is (or is
indeed not) a foot long. Thus, it does not matter whether the line used is indeed a foot
long.148 The mathematicians just use it as an example to show whatever they want to
demonstrate.149 Defending geometers against Protagoras, Aristotle tries to make it
clear that when geometers say something like ‘let AB be a foot long’, they are not
referring to the concrete line that they draw in the sand.
We saw that the ancient philosophers who discuss the role of diagrams in
ancient geometry take it for granted that geometers use constructions as a

146
Republic Books VI and VII; especially 527a–b; see also Burnyeat (2000), pp. 39–41.
147
Though construction as instruction which, e.g. determines the auxiliary figures involved in a
proof, does belong to its essence.
148
Accordingly, we may think of the geometers’ practice as a predecessor for heuristic methods in
philosophy.
149
Thus, we may wonder whether the role of diagrams in ancient mathematics is analogous to the
role of examples in philosophy. With Manders (2008) we could say that geometers rely only on
‘co-exact properties’ of geometric diagrams (i.e., on ‘those conditions which are unaffected by
some range of every continuous variation of a specified diagram’) for their proofs, but not on
‘exact conditions’ (i.e. those which change once the diagram is subject to the smallest vari-
ation), as we see it in Euclid.
46 Philosophy of Mathematics

central part of their investigation, they are not debating whether diagrams play
an integral role for mathematical proofs. The consequences they draw from this
fact differ, however: while Protagoras assumes this to lead into serious prob-
lems for geometers, both Plato and Aristotle with their widely differing ontol-
ogy try to show that in spite of the usage of perceptible, individual diagrams
whose features do not match those of the things proven in important respects,
mathematical proofs do not rely on something perceptible and individual. What
they prove is ultimately not dependent on the object drawn. The diagrams are
only representations of the real object of proof and so Plato and Aristotle are not
worried that these representations do have features different from what is
represented.
We should note that we do not seem to find a distinction in Plato’s and
Aristotle’s discussion of mathematics between drawings that may be mere
illustrations and constructions, on which Greek geometrical proofs arguably
depend and which play a deductive role in proofs. One reason for this lack may
be that understanding mathematics in principle as an ideal science in the way
Plato and Aristotle do (of which mathematics in practise may fall short) does not
allow for such a place for constructions.
Let us now move on to the second question mentioned earlier, whether these
drawings also work as existence proofs. There is certainly mathematical lan-
guage that suggests as much: Many propositions in Euclid contain a part that
sounds like an existence claim: ‘let there be’ or ‘let X be Y’ (estô). For example,
in proposition I, 4 we have ‘Let ABC and DEF be two triangles … ’. Some
scholars, prominently Zeuthen (1896), took the postulates to be existence
assertions. Now the estô we get in Euclid is only an existence assumption (or,
perhaps, an existence injunction, since it is an imperative); but not in itself a
proof. But the construction that usually follows may be read as proving that
some postulated mathematical object does indeed exist (for example, a triangle
that possesses certain features).
Against such a reading, it has been objected150 that we sometimes find several
solutions to the same problem; for example, to the doubling of a cube or to the
trisecting of an angle. This objection is not decisive, however, since nothing
excludes the possibility that we can find different ways to prove one and the
same existence. However, we do indeed not find any discussion of existence in
Euclid’s Elements, let alone something that is explicitly put forward as an
existence proof. Euclid’s justifications often do not show so much that an
assertion is true, but that a performed operation is licensed. And Harari
(2003) has claimed that understanding geometrical constructions as justifying

150
E.g. by Knorr (1975).
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 47

the validity of a concept by presenting a particular instance that accords with it

is a projection of the modern distinction in mathematics between definitions and
existence that arose as a response to the discovery of paradoxical sets.
Nevertheless, the assertions of postulates in connection with the diagrams
seems to have made philosophers think about existence proofs, at least in the
context of criteria for the presentation of scientific reasoning and results.
Accordingly, Aristotle is reading some of the mathematical problems we
know from Euclid as existence proofs. For Aristotle, existence proofs are an
important part of scientific inquiry – a science has to show for its basic kinds that
they exist and what they are.151 For Aristotle, these proofs do, however, not
concern individuals, but universals;152 and Aristotle is also clear that there can
be no existence proofs for the basic principles. By contrast, Plato in his
description of the mathematicians in the Republic criticises the mathematicians
for taking their starting points as given without any further proof or justification,
as we saw in Section 2.2.

3.2 Reductio ad Absurdum Proofs and Philosophical Paradoxes

Of the different mathematical methods of interest for philosophers, we will look
at only one in a bit more detail, namely the method of reductio ad absurdum. The
Latin term ‘reductio ad absurdum’ is a translation of the Greek expression hê eis
to adunaton apagôgê (reductio to the impossible), which we find first in
Aristotle’s Prior Analytics 29b9. But Aristotle does not suggest that he is
introducing this terminology for the first time.
In the kind of reductio proofs we will look at, the necessity of some p is
proven by showing non-p to be impossible; accordingly, they require tertium
non datur to hold.153 These kinds of reductio proofs are of special interest, since
they are a powerful method that we find both in mathematics and in philosophy
for cases where we cannot find a direct proof.154 They are central for the
philosophical genre of paradoxes; most of Zeno’s paradoxes work with such a
reductio structure, for example. And there are lots of reductio proofs in
Euclid.155 Within a mathematical context, it seems likely that reductios were
first developed for the proof of the development of the incommensurability of
the side and the diagonal of the square – at least, this is a rather old Pythagorean

151
See Section 4.1. 152 See Harari (2003). 153
Which Intuitionists doubt.
154
Aristotle seems to assume in 62b38–40 that whatever can be proved indirectly can also be
proved directly; but his own proof (in a wide sense) for the fundamentality of the principle of
non-contradiction in his Metaphysics and the fact that he never mentions a direct proof for the
incommensurability of the diagonal suggests that this may not hold of all indirect proofs.
155
See, for example, Elements I, 6, 19, or 26; for an overview of the structure of Zeno’s paradoxes,
see Sattler (2021).
48 Philosophy of Mathematics

proof, and if Aristotle wants to give an example for a reductio, he usually refers
to the incommensurability of the diagonal and the side of the square.156 We will
look at it as one relevant and important example that also raises interesting
questions about the interaction between philosophers and mathematicians.
The incommensurability of the side and the diagonal was a special discovery in
the development of Greek mathematics – a fact that is better understandable if we
remind ourselves of its Pythagorean background. We saw in Section 1.1 that on a
Pythagorean view, the world is set up as mathematically structured, according to
(natural) numbers and relations that constitute them. Everything can be brought
into a numerical relation to everything else. The discovery of the incommensur-
ability shakes such a world view, for it shows that there are entities that cannot
possibly be captured in terms of numerical ratios – the side and the diagonal of a
square can never be brought into such a numerical relationship. So there are some
things that seem to have no ratio, no logos; they are ‘irrational’. And this seems to
put the very idea of a rational cosmos into doubt.157 Plato expresses the puzzlement
about this finding in his Laws, 819c–820d, in a passage claiming that the Greeks
assume we can measure all lengths and breadths against each other; thus most
people are not aware that this is not possible for certain lengths and breadths.
Its effect on the mathematical community has seen different assessments by
modern scholarship: Tannery (1887) thinks it led to a foundational crisis of
mathematics not unlike the foundational crisis in mathematics at the end of the
nineteenth century. By contrast, Knorr (1975), pp. 308 ff., takes it to be the
background to the geometric style of number theory in Euclid’s Elements, Book
VII and the development of greater rigor in proportion theory; but he does not see it
as a crisis in Greek mathematics. However, also Knorr thinks that the problem of
the incommensurability engaged the effort of the most notable mathematicians of
the fourth century, Theodorus, Theatetus, Archytas, and Eudoxus. It was a crucial
force motivating Eudoxus’s theory of proportion which is the foundation of
Euclid’s proportion theory in Elements, Book V. And it seems to have been one
important factor for the increasing dominance of geometrical proofs – it shows that
there are some things in mathematics, like the relation of the diagonal of a square to
its sides, that cannot be dealt with arithmetically, but only geometrically.158

156
See, for example, 41a26–27 or 430a31; and see also Knorr (1975). In Prior Analytics II, 11
Aristotle shows how reductio ad absurdum works in general. Szabó (2004), however, claims
Elements IX, 30 (an odd number, if it measures an even number, must also measure its half) to
be the oldest indirect proof.
157
This strong effect on the Pythagorean world view explains why we are told that the person
discovering the incommensurability was allegedly drowned by his Pythagorean community –
whether or not this story is in fact true.
158
See also Plato’s depiction of a math lesson in his Theaetetus where we hear from young
Theaetetus that his teacher Theodorus was ‘demonstrating with the aid of diagrams’ – the
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 49

Given that the notion of the incommensurability of the side and diagonal
would in fact never come up when measuring an empirical square in that such a
measurement will always produce some result,159 this proof shows that by the
time it was discovered, Greek mathematics had clearly developed as a theoret-
ical science independent of its practical applicability. The claim that such
quantities are irrational is introduced through the very question posed and
based solely on logical deduction.160 The fact that incommensurability cannot
be detected by the senses, may also have made it a discovery of special interest
for Plato, who, as we have seen in Section 2, is very concerned about ways in
which to lead students in their inquiries from the perceptible to the merely
intelligible. Thus, it may not be a big surprise that Plato’s texts are the first ones
where we find the discovery of the incommensurable talked about.
Incommensurability is first mentioned in Plato’s Theaetetus, but the imagined
conversation between the young mathematician Theaetetus and Socrates does
not refer to the square root of the number two, but to that of three and so forth up
to seventeen (147dff.); hence, we are dealing with an already advanced stage of
this discovery (the imagined date of the conversation is 399 BCE, the year of
Socrates’ trial and death). The discovery of the incommensurable has been
suggested to be no later than the last quarter of the fifth century,161 but this still
leaves a lot of flexibility about the discovery in the fifth century. Given these
problems of dating it is also hard to say whether the method of reductio was first
developed by mathematicians and then taken up by philosophers or the route of
influence was the other way round. Accordingly, there has been some debate in
the scholarship about the relationship between the incommensurability proof
and Eleatic method. Szabo has claimed that the mathematicians in fact could
take up the logic of the method from the Eleatics.162 Knorr, on the other hand,
assumes that this is an old proof of the Pythagoreans,163 which would allow for
Zeno’s paradoxical method to have been influenced through exposure to some
version of the incommensurability proof. There is, of course, also the possibility
that both the Pythagoreans and Zeno arrived at a similar method independently
of each other at around the same time. Given that the Pythagoreans were
involved in both what we would call mathematical and philosophical investiga-
tions simultaneously, and we have seen so far in several places the keen interest

Greek word graphô can mean either to draw or to prove, presumably coming from geometry
proving by drawings.
159
See Mueller (1980), p. 115. 160 See Knorr (1975), pp. 2–4. 161
See von Fritz (1970).
162
Szabo (2004), pp. 148–149.
163
A clear sign for the antiquity of the proof, according to Knorr (1975), is the usage of the
dichotomy of odd and even and Aristotle’s reference to it, as well as a step showing that one
term is not a unit – an unnecessary step if the unit is considered to be an odd number, but
necessary if, with Philolaus and Archytas, we assume the unit to be both odd and even.
50 Philosophy of Mathematics

philosophers took in questions and problems raised by mathematicians, it

seems, however, much more likely that there was indeed some intellectual
exchange between mathematicians and philosophers.
We may think that the method is prepared in the indirect proofs we find in
Parmenides’ poem, fragment 8 and that his indirect proofs were an inspiration
for the form in which the incommensurability proofs were put. But
Parmenides’s proofs only show that F does not fit with what has been estab-
lished before by Parmenides; they do not show as such that not-F has to hold
independently of previous assumptions. This is something we only find with
Zeno’s paradoxes and the mathematical reductio ad absurdum proofs. Let us
have a brief look at these.
Our best evidence for the incommensurability proof is preserved as an
appendix to Euclid, Book X, Heiberg proposition 117. This version is an
insertion into Euclid’s text and shows some later reworking. But the core of
the proof is a good deal older, going back to the Pythagoreans, sometime in the
fifth century BCE. One version is mentioned by Aristotle, and according to
Knorr there were half a dozen versions of the incommensurability proofs
around.
The basic idea of this proof is the following: if we assume of a square ABCD
the side AB and its diagonal AC to be commensurable, then we have to assume
that the same number is both odd and even. This is a contradiction; thus they are
incommensurable.
The main steps are as follows: we assume that AC and AB are commensurable
with each other, hence they have a ratio equalling two numbers to each other;
called EF and g (see Figure 6).164 The version in Euclid also claims that ‘these
numbers be the least numbers in this ratio’, but all that is in fact required is that
they are not both even. It is then concluded that EF cannot be ‘a unit’, that is,
1, but has to be a number. ‘For if EF is a unit, and has the ratio to g that AC has to
AB, and AC is greater than AB, then EF is greater than the number g,165 which is
impossible.’166

164
Using two letters for the first number and one for the second number is taken over from the
original Greek text. Presumably two letters are used in the first case since in the course of
the proof it is then assumed that the magnitude which this number represents is divided in
half.
165
Number being everything which is greater than 1.
166
For the Pythagoreans, one as a unit is not a number and is both odd and even. Accordingly,
showing that EF is not 1 is meant to exclude the possibility that we are dealing with something
that for the Pythagoreans is odd and even, namely the 1. However, since EF is bigger than g,
what would have been needed is a proof that g cannot be a unit; thus, this is one of the places
where, according to Knorr, the reworked proof takes up an old Pythagorean proof without fully
understanding it.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 51

Figure 6 Proof for the incommensurability of the diagonal and the side
of a square.

In a second step it is shown that EF has to be even, since it has the same ratio
to g as AC has to AB, and the square of AC is double that of AB; if it is double
something, it has to be even:

EF:g = AC:AB,
(AC)2 = 2 × (AB)2
=> EF is even.
In a third step, it is demonstrated that g has to be odd, for otherwise EF and g
would both be even and could not be relatively prime. In a fourth and final step,
it is assumed that EF is divided in half by H, which shows that g has to be even.
For the square of EF has to be four times the square of EH (EF being double
EH), but also double of that of g, which in turn means that the square of g is
double that of EH. Accordingly, ‘the square of g is even, and thus g is even’ (if it
were odd, its square would be odd).

EF = 2 × EH;
(EF)2 = 4 × (EH)2;
(EF)2 = 2 × g2
=> g2 = 2 × (EH)2
=> g is even.

But in the third step it was shown that g is odd, so g has to be both odd and even,
which is impossible. Thus the assumption of AC and AB being commensurable
leads to a contradiction.
We find the main idea of the way in which this proof works also in many
paradoxes of Zeno: in order to show that motion, plurality, or topos (place/
space) are problematic, it is first assumed that there is a plurality, motion, or
topos before it is shown that this very assumption leads to inconsistencies.
52 Philosophy of Mathematics

Like in the incommensurability proof, so also in Zeno’s paradoxes, what is

used as a starting point is the opposite of what is shown to be the result in
the end. In the incommensurability proof we start with the assumption that
AB and AC are commensurable, while Zeno uses as a starting point one that
is not his own, but widely held, the position of a pluralist. And from this
starting point it is then shown that plurality, motion, and topoi are problem-
atic in themselves.
Both Zeno and mathematical reductio proofs start from a position they do not
share and then show that this position leads to contradictions – that the same
number has to be odd and even, that the same distance has to be finite and
infinite, and so on. And this contradiction shows that the position implying it is
false absolutely. In comparison to Parmenides’s indirect proofs, such reductios
can be seen to be much stronger because

(a) they make sure we do not introduce our own assumptions which the
opponent may not share; and
(b) the opponent is refuting herself – in the very act of thinking she is
undermining herself.

For the realm of mathematics, it is a good and strong proof, as it is for Zeno who
is the founder of the genre of paradoxes.167 The reason these proofs work very well
here is that they work within a framework in which it is clear that I have only two
alternatives – either AB and AC are commensurable or they are incommensurable,
either we can consistently think of a plurality of things or we cannot.
For later philosophers starting with Aristotle, however, this method of proof
ultimately needed further refinement, since in many philosophical contexts
showing that F cannot hold does not in itself demonstrate that not-F holds.
Accordingly, it is not necessarily seen as a strong proof and can only be used in
certain contexts.
For the mathematicians, the particular usage of this method to prove the
incommensurability of the side and the diagonal of the square seems to have
been one reason that led to a sharper distinction between arithmetic and
geometry, to a geometric style of number theory, and to shifting the burden of
proofs to geometry.

4 Central Concepts of Philosophy and Mathematics

This section will investigate important concepts that were originally devel-
oped either within a mathematical setting and then became central for

167
See Sattler (2021).
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 53

philosophy, or in a discussion to which philosophers and mathematicians

both seem to have contributed. It starts with a discussion of the notion of a
principle or starting point of an argument or proposition in Aristotle and
Euclid. We will then consider one central concept in natural philosophy that
developed under the influence of mathematics, namely continuity, by looking
at the oldest philosophical explanation of continuity in Parmenides’s poem,
at the reflection of mathematical treatments of continuity we find in the
Pseudo-Aristotelian treatise On Indivisible Lines, and at passages of
Euclid’s Elements. This will show that the most important account of con-
tinuity in ancient Greek thought, the one developed by Aristotle in his
Physics, rests on the mathematical treatment of geometrical objects as
being always further divisible while also taking up Eleatic terminology.
Closely linked to the understanding of continuity is the notion of limits and
of infinity. For the latter, we will leave out the philosophical strand of the
discussion in Anaximander, Anaxagoras, and Democritus and concentrate on
the mathematically inspired strand of this debate that shows up in some of
Zeno’s paradoxes and may be assumed in the method of exhaustion in Book
XII of Euclid’s Elements. It is this mathematical understanding that Aristotle
takes up, trying to show that it requires only a potential, not an actual infinity.
There are in principle several other important concepts – like the notion of
necessity or of proportion – that developed in some form of interplay
between philosophy and mathematics but that we will not be able to look at
here for reasons of space.

4.1 Principles and Starting Points

4.1.1 Principles in Euclid
Deducing from first principles (archai)168 is specific for Greek mathematics and
not to be found in Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics. We saw in the
previous section that for an axiomatised science, according to Aristotle, two
points are central: the rules of deduction, and the principles or axioms which
serve as starting points for proofs. While we discussed rules of deduction in the
previous section, we will deal with starting points here.
Such starting points themselves cannot be proven, but have to be taken as
given. What exactly these principles are, has changed over time, as we can see in
mathematics from the fact that the number of starting points in Euclid does not
match the number in Hilbert, who assumes twenty axioms. If we look at the

168
The Greek word archê carries with it connotations of truth, beginning, origin, and fundamen-
tality, which I try to convey by the title of this section, ‘principles and starting points’.
54 Philosophy of Mathematics

beginning of Euclid’s Elements, we see that he bases mathematics on three

kinds of first principles – definitions, postulates, and common notions:

1. Definitions of the basic concepts used

Many books of the Elements start with a set of definitions that are relevant for
the respective book. Book I, for example, on plane rectilinear geometry, starts
with the definitions of point, line, surface, and different plane angles; while the
arithmetical Book VII starts with the definitions of unit and number.
In addition to definitions, we find in Book I (and only there) two other kinds
of principles:

2. Postulates
Euclid presents five different postulates that seem to be instructions for con-
struction processes in geometry (such as to draw a straight line from any point to
any point). At least this characterization holds true of the first three postulates.
By contrast, the fourth postulate, claiming that ‘all right-angles are equal to each
other’ does not refer to something to be done and has been interpreted as either
equivalent to or presupposing a principle of invariability of figures or the
homogeneity of space.169 And the fifth postulate, the parallel-postulate, has
come under heavy attack since antiquity – later mathematicians either attempted
to prove it as a theorem or to replace it by some other definition of parallels. Like
the first three postulates, it seems to ensure the existence of a geometrical object,
in this case the meeting point of two lines (if they are not parallels). But it also
implicitly presupposes that we are dealing with the geometry of flat, not curved,
spaces, and accordingly does not hold for what since the nineteenth century has
been developed as non-Euclidean geometry.

3. Common notions
While the postulates in Euclid are specific for geometry, the common notions
are, as their name suggests, common to more than one science; in the context of
Euclid’s Elements, they apply to geometry and arithmetic equally. Modern
editions usually print five common notions (for example, the first common
notion reads ‘Things equal to the same thing are also equal to one another’);
but additional ones have been added later on, and there is also a dispute whether
these five were originally in Euclid.170 Since the third one (‘if equals are

169
See Heath (1956), p. 200.
170
Tannery (1884), p. 221 claims that they were not originally in Euclid, but added later on, since
they are oddly positioned – we have postulates peculiar for geometry before the notions
common to different mathematical sciences. By contrast, Heath (1956) thinks that the position
of the common notions is rather natural. It would have been even more awkward to separate
the postulates from the definitions by putting the postulates after the common notions, since
the postulates prove the existence of some of what is defined. And since Aristotle speaks about
common notions in the plural, Heath thinks it is likely that at least the first three common
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 55

subtracted from equals, the remainders are equal’) is frequently given by

Aristotle as an example of a common notion, it has the clearest claim to being
an old common notion. But the fact that it is unclear how many common notions
there were indeed in Euclid, how we should understand the genre of postulates,
and the fact that we do not find any reflection in the Elements about how
definitions, postulates, and common notions are connected show that the
question what kinds of principles are necessary for the science of mathematics
was not sufficiently clarified.
Especially the relationship between postulates and common notions has been
a matter of debate. It has been proposed to understand postulates as domain
specific, since they belong specifically to the domain of geometry, while
common notions are universal as they pertain equally to geometry and
arithmetic. As a distinction between the two, it has also been suggested that
postulates can be confirmed by demonstration, while common notions are
incapable of proof. Finally, the difference has also been framed as one between
practical and theoretical: postulates seem to be practical, as they refer to
something done or to be done, while common notions seem to be theoretical
since they refer to something known. Understanding the difference like this
seems to correspond to the distinction between problems and theorems that we
find in Euclid’s propositions.171
Theorems are what in modern terms would be called propositions, asserting
that all figures of a certain class possess some characteristic (for example, ‘In
any triangle, the greater side subtends the greater angle’, I, 18; ‘quod erat
demonstrandum’; using an all-quantifier), while problems call for constructing
a figure with certain characteristics (for example, to construct a pentagon, IV,
11; ‘quod facit demonstrandum’; using an existential-quantifier). The difference
between theorems and propositions can also be captured as one between
knowing that and knowing how.172
Especially the closeness of the last distinction between postulate and com-
mon notions to the one between propositions and theorem makes the lack of any
explicit reflection on the status of and the relation between the different kinds of

notions of Euclid were taken over from earlier mathematicians. These are the ones that a lot of
theorems in Euclid rely upon and that most modern interpreters take to be authentic. For a
recent survey of the evidence for their authenticity, see de Risi (2021).
171
See also Harari (2003), p. 2 who frames it as a ‘correspondence between the two types of first
principles and the two types of derived propositions’.
172
The older geometers regarded a theorem as directed at proving what is proposed, a problem as
directed at constructing what is proposed. See also Proclus 77, 7–81, 22. Harari (2003)
understands the distinction between problems and theorems as ‘a distinction between two
types of proofs: proofs that establish the correctness of certain constructions and proofs that
establish the truth of certain assertions’.
56 Philosophy of Mathematics

starting points in Euclid (and presumably also in specimens of the Elements

genre written before Euclid) strongly felt. Accordingly, in order to understand
the different types of starting points of the ancient mathematicians better, it is
helpful to have a look at the most important discussion of different starting
points for sciences before Euclid, namely at this discussion in Aristotle’s
Posterior Analytics.

4.1.2 Principles in Aristotle

It is in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics that we find the first systematic reflection

on the question what a principle of a science amounts to and which different
kinds of principles there are. While Aristotle makes it clear that he takes over the
term ‘axiom’ from the mathematicians (Metaphysics 1005a20), it is in his
Analytics that a first systematic account of different kinds of principles is
developed173 and that we find a first explicit discussion of how axioms have
to be characterised in order to work as first principles of a science.174 He
characterises principles as follows:

I call principles in each kind those things which it is not possible to prove that
they are. What the first principles and what follows from these mean, is assumed.
That they are is necessary to assume for the principles and demonstrated for the
others. For example, what a unit is or what straight or a triangle are; that units and
magnitudes are, this is assumed, but everything else is proven. (76a31–36)

Aristotle gives a systematic account of different kinds of principles for sciences in

general, while the examples he uses derive from mathematics. For him, the
examples used – unit, straight, and triangle – have three different statuses in the
science of principles: a unit is a first principle where we have to assume what and
that it is; ‘straight’ is a feature (pathê) of lines;175 and ‘triangle’ is one of the things
that follow from the first principles in geometry without itself being a first principle.
In the latter two cases, what they are is assumed, while that they are has to be
demonstrated.
Aristotle makes it clear that principles are that from which a proof starts,
while they are in turn unprovable (otherwise we would either get into an infinite
regress or a circular proof). He distinguishes axioms as general principles from
theses which are specific to an individual science.176 The axioms themselves

173
This also includes coining an important part of the language for further discussion.
174
See von Fritz (1955), pp. 33–35. 175 See 76b15.
176
In Posterior Analytics I, 2, however, he seems to distinguish between axiom and thesis by
pointing out that axioms must be grasped by anyone wanting to learn anything, while theses
need not be grasped by anyone. But these two characterisations fit together, since people not
interested in science A but only science B need not be concerned with the theses of science
A, while a grasp of axioms as common principles seems to be necessary for people interested in
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 57

divide into two groups: first, propositions that are true of everything, as, for
example, the law of non-contradiction; they have to be known by everybody
who wants to have any kind of scientific knowledge. The sciences do not reason
from them, but rather in accordance with them. Second, there are propositions
common to several sciences, for example, ‘if equals are taken from equals,
equals remain’, which is relevant only for sciences dealing with quantities. This
last example is one of the common notions we find in Euclid; while it is an
example Aristotle takes over from the mathematicians, it is Aristotle who gives
this kind of principle a systematic place.
Theses are divided into definitions, which say what something is, and hypoth-
eses, which say that something is or is not. There is a debate whether the latter
refers to existential propositions, that is, x exists, or to predicative statements,
that is, x is y.177 For the time being I follow the first interpretation, which
suggests that while definitions are concerned with the essence of the scientific
objects,178 hypotheses are concerned with their existence.179 The existence of
the most basic objects of a science, like the point in geometry, usually has to be
assumed, while the existence of more complex objects has to be proven, in
geometry usually by construction.
What can be used as such premises, as starting points for our conclusions?
Do these principles have to be necessary or can they be contingent? Do they
even have to be true? We do not find any answers to these questions in
Euclid. But we find outlines of a first philosophical discussion of such
principles in Plato’s example of the line in his Republic. Aristotle character-
ises such first principles or premises as follows in his Posterior Analytics:

‘If, then, understanding is as we posited, it is necessary for demonstrative

understanding in particular to depend on things which are true and primitive
and immediate and more familiar than and prior to and explanatory of the
conclusion’ (71b20–25).

different sciences. We should also bear in mind that the terminology is not always fully stable in
Aristotle and seems to have been in flux also in mathematics.
177
For the first reading, see, for example, Barnes (1993), pp. 100–101, for the second, Harari
(2003). For the second reading, we find support in passages like Posterior Analytics 92b4–8
which seems to suggest, according to Harari, that ‘the possibility of answering the question
“what it is” serves as a criterion for distinguishing existent objects from non-existent objects’.
The first interpretation can rely on passages such as 92b19–25, which seems to make it explicit
that a definition does not yet settle if what it accounts for is indeed possible.
178
Without making any statements about existence, so a definition could concern Leibniz’s regular
polyhedron with ten faces, which cannot exist, but can be defined. (For a different view,
claiming that for Aristotle ‘the existence of an entity is determined by means of definitions’,
see Harari (2003)).
179
In Aristotle’s Physics we see that he usually expects a scientific treatise to deal with both, for
example, the question what time is and whether it exists.
58 Philosophy of Mathematics

Thus we must proceed from starting points that are given six characterisations,180
three of them absolute, and three relative. Given that we are dealing with premises
for demonstrative sciences, our starting points have to be true, they have to be
primitive in the sense that they are not derived from others, and immediate in the
sense that they cannot be gained from a syllogism with a middle-term – these are the
absolute characterisations. The relative ones tell us that these principles are more
familiar than other things, in the sense that they are better known to us; they are prior
to others in the sense that they have to be assumed in order to understand what builds
on them, and finally they also have to be explanatory of the conclusions.
Given that these principles have nothing prior to them, they themselves
cannot be proven, at least not in the same way as what is based on them can,181
or not in the same science as for which they are principles.182 Instead, they have
to be what we would call self-evident; what Aristotle characterises as

what must be and what must be thought because of itself. For there is no
external proof (logos) for it nor demonstration (apodeixis), but only one in the
soul; since there is no syllogism. For one can always block an external
argument, but not always an internal one. (76b23–27)

So these basic principles (a) exist through themselves; and (b) we believe them
through themselves; that is, they are not known through an inference, but rather
through a kind of internal understanding that does not rely on anything else.

4.1.3 Comparison between Aristotle and Euclid

If we now compare Aristotle’s and Euclid’s understanding of principles, we see
that they share important commonalities. For both, at least some principles are
definitions, and definitions of the basic items are fundamental (we may even
suggest that they share a common understanding of what definitions should do).
These basic items cannot be proven while the existence of what builds on these
has to be proven – Aristotle’s claim that it has to be shown ‘that they are’ fits, at
least to some degree, Euclid’s postulates where existence may be understood to
be proven by constructions. For both thinkers, definitions make it clear what so-
and-so is, but assert nothing about the existence of the thing defined, as can be
seen in Euclid, for example, when he defines a square in definition I, 22 but does

180
The exact understanding of these six characterisations has seen different interpretations; see von
Fritz (1955), pp. 21–24 and McKirahan (1992), pp. 24ff.
181
Some may allow for indirect proofs of the kind Aristotle suggests for the principle of non-
contradiction in his Metaphysics Γ, showing that everybody who denies this principle has
already to embrace it in order to be able to formulate any denial.
182
Plato’s Republic may be read as suggesting that dialectic can also prove principles for other
disciplines.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 59

not assume its existence until after I, 46, when it has been constructed,183 and is
explicated by Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics II.184
Furthermore, both Aristotle and Euclid work with common notions, even if
the language they use for labelling these principles that are common to several
sciences is not exactly the same.185 Aristotle claims that the mathematicians
restrict such common notions as ‘equals taken from equals leave equals’ to their
respective field, while in principle it holds for all quantitative things and is as
such investigated in the area of what he calls first philosophy, that is, metaphys-
ics (Metaphysics XI, 4, 1061b17–27).
Aristotle and Euclid differ, however, in some of the concrete definitions they
give; for example, the point is defined by Euclid as ‘that which has no parts’,
while for Aristotle this is not enough; we also need to add that it has a position,
in order to distinguish it from the unit. Here we may follow Proclus’ assumption
that a point is the only partless thing that is a subject matter of geometry, so that
the further qualification we find in Aristotle’s account can be left out in Euclid,
given the context. But a definition like Euclid’s of a straight line as ‘that which
lies evenly with the points on itself’ would, according to Heath, be an unscien-
tific definition for Aristotle, since ‘lies evenly’ can only be understood with the
help of the notion of a straight line, which is what is meant to be defined.186 And,
in contrast to Euclid, Aristotle has a fully fledged theory of definitions.
Investigating what the role of a definition is and what can count as an
appropriate definition starts in philosophy with Socrates and is developed by
Plato in important ways. Aristotle makes it clear that a definition of X must be
essentially predicated of X and only of X (while the individual attributes in a
definition taken separately will apply more widely). And a definition that is not of
first principles must be expressed in terms of things prior to what is to be defined.
(This criterion is what Euclid’s definition of a line also seems to violate.)
We find three different kinds of definition in Aristotle: first, indemonstrable
definitions of primary terms; second, real or causal definitions in which the
content of a syllogism is packed into a single proposition; and third, nominal
definitions. Aristotle discusses causal and nominal definitions when examining
the question whether definitions can be proven (Posterior Analytics II, 7–10),
showing that they appear in a demonstration either as a premise or are in a way
identical to the whole demonstration.

183
But see Harari (2003) for a different understanding.
184
Existence questions in arithmetic could be questions like whether a certain number (e.g., a
prime between 20 and 30) does indeed exist.
185
See Heath (1956), p. 120. The label ‘common notions’ may in fact not be by Euclid; see de Risi
(2021), p. 302.
186
Plato, Parmenides 137e claims ‘straight’ to be whatever has its middle in front of both its ends,
which is also quoted by Aristotle.
60 Philosophy of Mathematics

Furthermore, Aristotle also deals with principles that are important for all
scientific knowledge, such as the principle of non-contradiction, while we do
not find any axioms of that kind of generality in Euclid. On the other hand, the
practical aspect of some of Euclid’s postulates that lies in the constructions
required would not fit Aristotle’s theory of science.
Overall, however, we seem to find a principal alignment between the two:
Aristotle’s common axioms correspond to Euclid’s common notions, his definitions
(horismoi) more or less to Euclid’s definitions (horoi); and his hypotheses are akin to
Euclid’s postulates (insofar as they can be understood as assertions of existence).187
Euclid’s specific distinction between definitions, postulates, and common
notions does not suggest he has read Aristotle very much. But it has been
suggested that both may draw from a common source.188
The genre of ‘Elements’, to which Euclid’s work belongs, does in itself declare
that it is dealing with basic mathematical principles or starting points – it is not
attempting to present new research, but rather to put the current mathematical
knowledge in a ‘systematic’ form. According to Eudemus, there were at least
three earlier Elements around before Euclid: the first by Hippocrates of Chios,
one by Leon, and one by Theudius of Magnesia; the last one was written in the
surrounding of Plato’s Academy.189 Accordingly, at least some Elements came
into being in the vicinity of flourishing philosophical debates.190 This may
explain why Philodemus called Plato the architect of mathematics. Aristotle in
his Analytics probably refers to the third generation of Elements, to Theudius.191
Let us now move on to other notions of importance for both mathematicians
and philosophers.

4.2 Mathematical and Philosophical Notions of Continuity

The most important conception of continuity192 in ancient times is Aristotle’s
account.193 It is developed as an account for physical magnitudes, but yet it

187
Though three of Euclid’s postulates license construction and we find nothing equivalent to this
in Aristotle.
188
And Harari (2003) claims that ‘Euclid’s introduction of the distinction between definitions and
postulates seems to correspond to Aristotle’s distinction between definitions and existence
claims. That is to say, the introduction of three types of first principles seems to stem from
the attempt to accommodate the structure of the Elements with Aristotle’s requirement, accord-
ing to which the existence of the defined terms should be established.’
189
See Proclus (1992) 66.4–67.12.
190
We do not know whether these early Elements contained only propositions or also definitions,
common notions, and postulates. It may be that the philosophical discussions about starting
points in Plato’s Academy (which, of course, included the young Aristotle) led to them being
eventually included in the genre of Elements.
191
See Heath (1921), p. 321.
192
For more details concerning this section, see Sattler (2020b).
193
For a modern take on Aristotle’s understanding of continuity, see Hellman and Shapiro (2018).
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 61

explicitly takes up mathematical insights. By understanding continua as what is

always further divisible into divisibles without ever getting to zero extension or
indivisible atoms, Aristotle’s account of continuity is the philosophical alterna-
tive to atomism.
The first philosophical account of continuity in the history of thought can
already be found in Parmenides in the fifth century BCE. For him, something is
continuous if it is homogenous in every respect, which means displaying no
differences of kind, quality, or quantity.194 As a result of this uninterrupted
homogeneity, continua are indivisible according to Parmenides: divisions are
only possible where there are differences; since there are no internal differences
in a continuum, it is completely indivisible.
Drawing the inference from complete homogeneity to indivisibility is supported
by some paradoxes of Zeno, Parmenides’ student, which demonstrate the problems
we get into if we assume continua like magnitudes and motion to be divisible. For
example, in one of his motion paradoxes, called the ‘dichotomy’ or ‘runner
paradox’ (fragment DK29A25), Zeno raises the problem of how to conceptualize
a finite motion, like that of a runner covering a finite race course AB in a finite time
FG. To do so, she first has to cover half of the course AC, and then again the first
half of the remaining half CD, then DE, ad infinitum (see Figure 7).
Thus it seems a runner has to cover an infinite number of spatial parts in order
to cover a finite distance in a finite time. For a spatial distance seems to contain
infinitely many parts, all of which have to be covered. Given that we cannot pass
infinitely many spatial parts in a finite time, the paradox seems to suggest that
motion cannot be conceptualized.195
In one of his plurality paradoxes,196 Zeno shows that if we take some physical
magnitude to be divisible at one point (without this point being legitimised by
any internal differences), then the magnitude is divisible everywhere; but if
divisible everywhere, it can also be divided everywhere,197 and we never reach
consistent parts in this way. For either these parts have no extension, so that we

A C D E B space (s)
–––––––––– 1–––––2––3–––
F G time (t)
––––––––––––––––––––––––

Figure 7 Zeno’s runner paradox.

194
See Sattler (2019).
195
For a detailed discussion of the motion paradoxes, see Sattler (2020a), chapter 3.
196
Simplicius (2011), In Phys. 139.19-140.6, Lee (1967), fragments 1 and 2.
197
This step from being divisible to being divided and thus from possibility to actuality is objected
to by Aristotle.
62 Philosophy of Mathematics

face the problem of how some extended physical whole can be composed of
extensionless parts. Or these parts have some extension, in which case either
this shows we are not yet done with our division and our parts are indeterminate;
or the parts seem to be infinitely many,198 in which case they seem to lead to an
infinite extension. Zeno raises these and similar paradoxes for physical con-
tinua. Mathematical replies to them have often been suggested, based on
modern mathematical developments such as the possibility of calculating the
sum of an infinite convergent series, mathematical functions since Cauchy, and
the limit of a function. But it remains a question whether a solely mathematical
reply is sufficient for the problems they raise for the physical realm.199
Mathematical atomism of the kind we find in the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise
On Indivisible Lines200 seems to have responded to these paradoxes, as we can
see from the fact that the need to avoid Zeno’s paradoxes is mentioned as one of
the points in favour of the assumption of indivisible lines. The basic idea of
atomism here is that we can only divide magnitudes up to a certain point, before
we hit indivisibles. The parts derived by division thus will never be infinite.
Also Aristotle’s account of continuity is meant to show, among other things,
how a physical theory of continuity can reply to these Zenonian paradoxes.
Aristotle gives us two different characterisations of continuity:

(1) Continuous are those things whose limit, at which they touch, is one
(Physics V, 3).
(2) Continuous is that which is divisible into what is always further
(or infinitely) divisible (Physics VI, 2).

The first account of continuity is two-place, ‘A is continuous with B’, while the
second is one-place, ‘A is continuous’. Aristotle does not explain why he gives
us two different accounts, but he moves freely between the two, which thus
seem to be closely related.
Understanding extended magnitudes as being divisible without end is one of
the crucial notions Aristotle employs from a mathematical context in order to set
up a science of locomotion in his Physics. At first glance, the suggestion that
Aristotle takes up a mathematical understanding may not seem very plausible.

198
Zeno does not explain in this paradox why they are infinitely many. They may seem to be
infinitely many since from a certain point onwards such divisions will be beyond what is
perceptible, or, because between any two parts there has to be a further one in between to
guarantee that they are indeed different parts, as he claims in DK29B3.
199
For details, see Sattler (2020a), chapter 3.
200
Geometrical atomism of the kind reflected in this treatise was defended by Xenocrates in Plato’s
Academy. In Plato’s Timaeus we saw a form of atomism that assumes smallest triangles as
atomistic building blocks, and in Aristotle’s Physics, Book VI we find arguments against point
atomism.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 63

For we do not find a discussion or explicit definition of ‘suneches’, the Greek

term translated as ‘continuous’, in the mathematical texts handed down to us
from the time up to Aristotle. And most of the occurrences of the term suneches
in Euclid refer to a continued proportion.201
We have, however, clear indications that the mathematicians understood
lines, surfaces, and solids as continua in the Aristotelian sense: there are a few
passages in the Elements in which Euclid uses the term suneches as being
successive in the way continuous lines are – so as continuous in a two-place
sense (AB is continuous with BC).202 And On Indivisible Lines makes it clear
that a one-place understanding of continuity is presupposed by geometers, since
they treat their geometrical objects as being always further divisible for their
mathematical activities (969b20ff.). When they assume crossing lines and
similar constructions, there is no reflection of atomistic worries, such as that a
line crossing another would need to go between two atoms; rather, infinite
divisibility is simply assumed.203 And Aristotle himself in Physics III claims
the mathematicians to understand magnitudes in this sense (203b17–18).
Aristotle’s own work is central for establishing an account of continuity
within natural philosophy and for contrasting it to what is discrete. His
Categories (4b20) is the first text demonstrating that quantities can be divided
into discrete and continuous ones. It gives an argument for understanding
numbers as discrete and lines as continuous. The fact that Aristotle does not
simply take it for granted in his Categories that numbers are discrete, but thinks
he has to argue for there being no contact between the parts of numbers, shows
that he is not taking over ready-made terminology. But Aristotle’s primary
examples for demonstrating what being discrete and being continuous mean
are from the realm of mathematics – numbers and lines. So Aristotle seems to
take up a distinction that is implicitly there in mathematical thinking. By
employing and expanding Eleatic terminology – the term suneches plays a
crucial role with the Eleatics but the notion of discretenessis is not to be
found – Aristotle introduces the distinction between continuity and discreteness
explicitly into the philosophical realm.
From the mathematicians Aristotle can take up a one-place as well as a two-
place understanding of continuous quantities, on which his two different
accounts of continuity are based. For him continua are homogenous, but in
contrast to Parmenides, they only need to be homogenous in the genus in
question and can allow for differences in other respects. And in contrast to the
Eleatic inference that what is continuous has to be indivisible, Aristotle agrees

201
See, e.g., VIII, 8. 202 See Book XI, 1; Book I, postulate 2; and Book IV, 16.
203
See also Proclus (1992), 277, 25.
64 Philosophy of Mathematics

with the mathematicians that continua are divisible wherever we want, ad

infinitum.
But Aristotle is not simply transferring the mathematical understanding of
magnitudes to physics. Rather he adopts it for the physical realm, as becomes
clear when he discusses the difference between continuity and contiguity. While
for mathematicians, two lines in the same plane that touch are continuous and
one,204 in physical contexts, two things that are continuous do not become one
thing simply by touching. Accordingly, for Aristotle continuous things (a)
possess touching limits (which suffices for continuity in mathematics) and (b)
these limits have to be one, so that these objects move as one whole and are not
only neighbouring things (an additional requirement for the physical realm)
(Physics V, 3).
Aristotle’s understanding of continuity is closely linked to his account of
limits and of infinity: we will briefly look at these two in the following sections
4.3 and 4.4.

4.3 Limits – the Distinction between Inner and Outer Limits

What delimits one thing from another? This question has been raised as a
problem for natural philosophy by Zeno, but Aristotle’s answer is important
also for the philosophy of ancient mathematics. Zeno claims in fragment
DK29B3 that any plurality of things seems to be the very number it is; let us
say there are two things, A and B. At the same time this plurality has to be
infinitely many because between every two things there has to be another thing.
For in order to ensure that A and B are indeed two separate things, there must be
some other thing C in between. But then we also need a thing between A and C,
and C and B to separate them from each other, ad infinitum.205 Natural philo-
sophers reacted to this paradox by pointing out that what separates one thing
from another need not be another thing. For example, with the atomists it is the
void that guarantees the separateness of two things, between two atoms as well
as between two phenomenal things.
Also Aristotle does not assume that we need a further thing to separate two
things, but only what he calls a limit: each physical magnitude possesses limits
that are not themselves things nor extended parts. Limits possess one dimension
less than what they limit; for example, the limits of a one-dimensional line are
points and thus without extension. Limits that delimit a magnitude from its
surrounding are external limits. For Aristotle, continua also have what we can
call ‘inner limits’, i.e. division points that mark off possible parts within a
continuum. Usually these division points are not given, but they can be

204 205
As long as they do not simply intersect or form an angle. See Sattler (2020b).
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 65

constructed wherever we like. For example, if we measure a long plank with a

small ruler, we mark off parts of the plank with the help of such marks. Outer
limits separate one whole from another; they guarantee the unity of a continuum
vis-à-vis other continua. Inner limits, by contrast, guarantee the internal unity of
a continuum by showing that we can divide it wherever we please without ever
finding a gap.
This distinction between inner and outer limits of continua is the first prede-
cessor of the modern distinction between points lying anywhere within an
interval and the end points of such an interval. Furthermore, the modern distinc-
tion between closed and open intervals, that is, between intervals which contain
their end points and those that do not, can be seen as prefigured in Aristotle’s
analysis of the outer limits that are of most concern to him in his Physics, namely
those between motion and rest. Aristotle makes it clear that if a moving thing
slows down and comes to a standstill, there is no last point of motion nor a first
point of rest; for every point within a motion we may choose, there will always be
another one closer to the limit between motion and rest. Thus, he is the first to
clarify that there is no first or last point within a continuous interval. The limit
between motion and rest can be seen in analogy to the way we think of the limit of
a continuous open interval nowadays: it is the point of an interval that in contrast
to all other possible points does not have an ε-neighbourhood.206
We will not be able to discuss the notion of a limit further here. Instead, we
will now move on to infinity.

4.4 Philosophical and Mathematical Notions of Infinity

With the notion of infinity (apeiron) we are dealing with a notion that from early
on was important for mathematics as well as for physics – being about quantities
in general, it is relevant for mathematics, but it also plays a role in discussions
about the world as a whole and thus for physics. The mathematicians also deal
with one-dimensional infinite extensions, of which we can have a plurality, such
as the infinite lines we find in Euclid. By contrast, the natural philosophers
discuss infinite extension with respect to bodies and thus as something three-
dimensional, so that there could at most be one of these. For if more than one of
these infinite bodies were to exist, these infinite bodies would limit each other
and thus not be infinite any longer, as, for example, Gorgias argues.207

206
Intuitively speaking, an ε-neighbourhood of a point is a set of points surrounding this point
within a certain distance, called ε, such that one can move to and fro without leaving the set.
Somewhat more formally, for a given point a on the real number line and some positive number
ε, ε > 0, we call the ε-neighbourhood of a the set of all numbers x such that the distance between
x and a is less than ε.
207
See MXG 979b20–27 in Aristotle (1995) and Sextus, Adv. Mathem. VII, 69–70.
66 Philosophy of Mathematics

The philosophers seem to be aware of the mathematical usage there is of that

notion and attempt to preserve it in their conception of infinity. But while the
intensive philosophical discussion about infinity, which started at least with
Zeno and finds a full reply in Aristotle, may make us expect to find a reflection
of it with the mathematicians, there is none to be found in Euclid.
In philosophy, being apeiron is a central notion almost from the very begin-
ning, starting with Anaximander. The Greek word apeiron is formed with the
help of the alpha privative that is usually understood as added to the Greek word
for limit or end, peras; so apeiron is that which is without limit or end; it is not
quantifiable. There is no systematic distinction between what is infinite and
what is unbounded with the ancient Greeks; and our modern distinction between
countable (ℕ, ℚ) and uncountable (ℝ) infinities is not known to ancient
philosophers.
The first philosophers view infinity either as a characteristic or as a bearer of
characterisations. The latter usage is prominent in Anaximander, who under-
stands apeiron as the basic substance out of which everything comes into being
and into which it dissolves again. By contrast, for Aristotle apeiron is an attribute
of number and magnitude and hence incapable of independent existence.
Zeno attempts to show in several of his paradoxes that conceptualising
multitudes as well as magnitudes of finite things entangles us in the assumption
that they are also infinite and thus characterised simultaneously by opposing
features. As we saw earlier, Zeno shows in DK29B3 that things that we take to
be of finite number are also of an infinite number. And things we take to be of a
finite size, such as a certain physical body, also have to be assumed to be of
infinite size (DK29B1), for we can always go on to divide it into further parts
and each of these parts will have some ‘magnitude and thickness’. We saw
earlier that in the runner paradox, Zeno shows that a finite extension to be
covered also has to be conceived as being infinitely divisible,208 and thus seems
to leave the runner to cover infinitely many spatial parts. In all these cases, Zeno
thinks we face the problem that something finite is also infinite, which is seen as
paradoxical.
Aristotle reacts to Zeno’s motion paradoxes by trying to show that the
seemingly dubious alliance finite things have with infinity is unproblematic if
conceived in the right way. He first distinguishes explicitly different kinds of
infinity – most importantly infinity of division from infinity of addition.209
According to Aristotle, Zeno did not sufficiently distinguish between the two
so that from an always continuing division of a continuous stretch Zeno wrongly
208
Scholarship in the first half of the twentieth century assumed that Zeno’s paradoxes about
infinite divisibility attempt to challenge also the mathematicians.
209
He is also aware of convergent infinite series; see Physics 206b3–9.
 Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid 67

infers an infinite extension.210 Aristotle attempts to show that assuming an

infinite extension, and especially an infinite body, is inconsistent (he argues
for the universe to be finite).211 Infinite divisibility, by contrast, which he
explicitly claims to come from the mathematicians (203b15–30), is the main
reason we cannot exclude the idea of infinity tout court. Continuous magnitudes
are indeed always further divisible, Aristotle assumes. But this does not mean
that they can have been divided wherever they are divisible (among other
things, several of the possible parts derived from division will overlap, so we
cannot derive all these overlapping parts at any given time). And more gener-
ally, for Aristotle the process of division can always go on but will never lead to
an end. For him the infinity of division is only a potential infinity, not one that
can be fully actualized.212
Fitting with his assessment of mathematics as a secure science, Aristotle is
eager to show that his finitist conception of the universe can preserve the infinity
the mathematicians in fact need for their practise (207b27ff.). According to
Aristotle, the mathematicians do not really need an actual infinity; all they need
is that any given line can be further extended or further divided, and there can
always be a greater number than any assigned number (for any integer n there
can be an integer n + 1)213 – all of which for him belong to the potential infinite.
A final look at Euclid’s usage of the infinite in the Elements shows that the
fundamental philosophical discussions about infinity are interestingly absent
from mathematical thinking of the time. On the one hand, infinite divisibility,
which Aristotle claims to be important for the mathematicians and which Zeno’s
paradoxes put into question, is not explicitly formulated (though implicitly
assumed in ancient mathematics, as shown by On Indivisible Lines).214 The
place where we may assume infinite divisibility to be explicitly in play (and to
find some affinity to philosophical discussions) is the method of exhaustion. It is
used in several propositions in Elements, Book XII, and shows that a figure can

210
Zeno seems to assume that infinite division may lead to infinitely many non-converging
extended parts which, added back together, would lead to an infinitely extended whole –
Aristotle analyses this inference as a lack of distinguishing strictly between infinity of addition
and division (233a21 ff.).
211
For Aristotle, there cannot be an infinite body, since body is defined as what is limited by a
surface; and there cannot be an infinite number since number is what can be counted.
212
It is potential in a very specific way, see Sattler (2020b). For Aristotle, not every part that can
potentially be conceived can thus be actually there, but any part can be actualized.
Consequently, the whole continuum cannot be thought of as the sum of its parts, if by this we
mean that all parts are given prior to the sum.
213
There ‘can be’, not there ‘exists’ an integer n + 1, otherwise, infinitely many integers would
exist, which goes against Aristotle’s finitist conception that does not allow for an actually
existing infinite magnitude or multitude.
214
Infinite divisibility is also discussed by later authors, like Geminus and Proclus, in the context of
commenting on Euclid I, 10.
68 Philosophy of Mathematics

be approximated by a sequence of other, smaller figures inscribed inside it. For

example, we ‘square’ a circle by continuously inscribing a sequence of regular
polygons inside it, starting with a square, seemingly going on ad infinitum.
However, Euclid stops after a small number of steps here, just enough to show
that the difference between the original figure and the inscribed figure decreases
by at least half at each step of the sequence. Accordingly, there is no talk about
infinity here; Euclid does not tell us to continue always further.
On the other hand, Euclid assumes infinity in multitude and magnitude in the
Elements in a way that does not suggest any conceptual difficulties with it; for
example, for Euclid there exist infinitely many commensurable and incommen-
surable straight lines (Elements X, def. 3). And he even assumes infinity in cases
where strictly speaking it is not needed, such as in I, 12, where it is ‘required to
draw a straight line perpendicular to the given infinite straight line AB from the
given point C, which is not on AB’ – here the given line is infinite, but in fact we
can use a line of whatever size we choose; we do not need an infinite line.
There is one place in the Elements, however, where the employment of
infinity is indeed necessary. In Book I, definition 23, parallels are defined with
the help of infinity: ‘Parallel lines are straight lines which, being in the same
plane, and being produced to infinity in each direction, meet with one another in
neither (of these directions).’ And the fifth postulate in Book I claims that ‘if a
straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same
side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced to infinity,
meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles’ (we are
dealing with geometries only of flat spaces here); see also I, 29.
This is the only context where Aristotle’s suggestion does not seem to work,
that mathematicians do not really need lines of infinite length but only of
arbitrarily long length. For if we assume that the lines are not extended to
infinity but only as long as we please, too many pairs of lines will count as
parallel and thus falsify postulate 5. Hussey has suggested a modal reworking
for Aristotelian finitists.215 But in Euclid, we do not find any such reworking,
nor any sign of the fundamental philosophical debate about infinity. While
philosophers of the classical time take mathematics as the main example to
discuss what makes for a secure science, mathematicians at least in part ignore
their philosophical considerations.

215
Hussey (1993) suggests to rework definition 23 as follows: ‘Parallel straight lines are those,
which being in the same plane, are such that it is not possible that there should be a length L such
that, if the lines are produced in either direction to a length L, they meet’; so we would need to
work with a modal operator such as ‘it is not possible that’.
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 Acknowledgements
I want to thank Stewart Shapiro for encouraging me to write this Element; two
anonymous readers for the press for their helpful suggestions; Henry Mendell
for conversations on the relationship of Greek mathematics to its Babylonian
and Egyptian forerunners, Salomon Ofmann for conversations on incommen-
surability; Christian Tapp and Gottfried Heinemann for valuable feedback on
individual sections, and especially Vera-Maria Erdmann and Steven Wagner for
reading the whole manuscript. Vera-Maria Erdmann also helped to make some
of my drawings and ideas computer-readable.

I dedicate this Element to the memory of my grandfather, A. Leichtfried, who

taught me reading, writing, and arithmetic before I started school.
 The Philosophy of Mathematics

Penelope Rush
University of Tasmania
From the time Penny Rush completed her thesis in the philosophy of mathematics (2005),
she has worked continuously on themes around the realism/anti-realism divide and the
nature of mathematics. Her edited collection, The Metaphysics of Logic (Cambridge
University Press, 2014), and forthcoming essay ‘Metaphysical Optimism’ (Philosophy
Supplement), highlight a particular interest in the idea of reality itself and curiosity and
respect as important philosophical methodologies.

Stewart Shapiro
The Ohio State University
Stewart Shapiro is the O’Donnell Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State University, a
Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Connecticut, and Professorial Fellow at
the University of Oslo. His major works include Foundations without Foundationalism
(1991), Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology (1997), Vagueness in Context
(2006), and Varieties of Logic (2014). He has taught courses in logic, philosophy of
mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of religion, Jewish philosophy,
social and political philosophy, and medical ethics.

About the Series

This Cambridge Elements series provides an extensive overview of the philosophy of
mathematics in its many and varied forms. Distinguished authors will provide an
up-to-date summary of the results of current research in their fields and give their
own take on what they believe are the most significant debates influencing research,
drawing original conclusions.
 The Philosophy of Mathematics

Elements in the Series

Mathematical Pluralism
Graham Priest
The Mereology of Classes
Gabriel Uzquiano
Iterative Conceptions of Set
Neil Barton
Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematical Practice
Jessica Carter
Elements of Purity
Andrew Arana
Husserl’s Philosophy of Mathematical Practice
Mirja Hartimo
Definitions and Mathematical Knowledge
Andrea Sereni
Medieval Finitism
Mohammad Saleh Zarepour
Mathematics is (mostly) Analytic
Gregory Lavers
Mathematical Notations
Dirk Schlimm
Abstractionism
Francesca Boccuni and Luca Zanetti
Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid
Barbara M. Sattler

A full series listing is available at: www.cambridge.org/EPM