A major activity among geometers in the 3rd century bce was the development of geometric approaches in the study of the physical sciences—specifically, optics, mechanics, and astronomy. In each case the aim was to formulate the basic concepts and principles in terms of geometric and numerical quantities and then to derive the fundamental phenomena of the field by geometric constructions and proofs.

In optics, Euclid’s textbook (called the Optics) set the precedent. Euclid postulated visual rays to be straight lines, and he defined the apparent size of an object in terms of the angle formed by the rays drawn from the top and the bottom of the object to the observer’s eye. He then proved, for example, that nearer objects appear larger and appear to move faster and showed how to measure the height of distant objects from their shadows or reflected images and so on. Other textbooks set out theorems on the phenomena of reflection and refraction (the field called catoptrics). The most extensive survey of optical phenomena is a treatise attributed to the astronomer Ptolemy (2nd century ce), which survives only in the form of an incomplete Latin translation (12th century) based on a lost Arabic translation. It covers the fields of geometric optics and catoptrics, as well as experimental areas, such as binocular vision, and more general philosophical principles (the nature of light, vision, and colour). Of a somewhat different sort are the studies of burning mirrors by Diocles (late 2nd century bce), who proved that the surface that reflects the rays from the Sun to a single point is a paraboloid of revolution. Constructions of such devices remained of interest as late as the 6th century ce, when Anthemius of Tralles, best known for his work as architect of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople, compiled a survey of remarkable mirror configurations.

Mechanics was dominated by the work of Archimedes, who was the first to prove the principle of balance: that two weights are in equilibrium when they are inversely proportional to their distances from the fulcrum. From this principle he developed a theory of the centres of gravity of plane and solid figures. He was also the first to state and prove the principle of buoyancy—that floating bodies displace their equal in weight—and to use it for proving the conditions of stability of segments of spheres and paraboloids, solids formed by rotating a parabolic segment about its axis. Archimedes proved the conditions under which these solids will return to their initial position if tipped, in particular for the positions now called “stable I” and “stable II,” where the vertex faces up and down, respectively.

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In his work Method Concerning Mechanical Theorems, Archimedes also set out a special “mechanical method” that he used for the discovery of results on volumes and centres of gravity. He employed the bold notion of constituting solids from the plane figures formed as their sections (e.g., the circles that are the plane sections of spheres, cones, cylinders, and other solids of revolution), assigning to such figures a weight proportional to their area. For example, to measure the volume of a sphere, he imagined a balance beam, one of whose arms is a diameter of the sphere with the fulcrum at one endpoint of this diameter and the other arm an extension of the diameter to the other side of the fulcrum by a length equal to the diameter. Archimedes showed that the three circular cross sections made by a plane cutting the sphere and the associated cone and cylinder will be in balance (the circle in the cylinder with the circles in the sphere and cone) if the circle in the cylinder is kept in its original place while the circles in the sphere and cone are placed with their centres of gravity at the opposite end of the balance. Doing this for all the sets of circles formed as cross sections of these solids by planes, he concluded that the solids themselves are in balance—the cylinder with the sphere and the cone together—if the cylinder is left where it is while the sphere and cone are placed with their centres of gravity at the opposite end of the balance. Since the centre of gravity of the cylinder is the midpoint of its axis, it follows that (sphere + cone):cylinder = 1:2 (by the inverse proportion of weights and distances). Since the volume of the cone is one-third that of the cylinder, however, the volume of the sphere is found to be one-sixth that of the cylinder. In similar manner, Archimedes worked out the volumes and centres of gravity of spherical segments and segments of the solids of revolution of conic sections—paraboloids, ellipsoids, and hyperboloids. The critical notions—constituting solids out of their plane sections and assigning weights to geometric figures—were not formally valid within the standard conceptions of Greek geometry, and Archimedes admitted this. But he maintained that, although his arguments were not “demonstrations” (i.e., proofs), they had value for the discovery of results about these figures.

The geometric study of astronomy has pre-Euclidean roots, Eudoxus having developed a model for planetary motions around a stationary Earth. Accepting the principle—which, according to Eudemus, was first proposed by Plato—that only combinations of uniform circular motions are to be used, Eudoxus represented the path of a planet as the result of superimposing rotations of three or more concentric spheres whose axes are set at different angles. Although the fit with the phenomena was unsatisfactory, the curves thus generated (the hippopede, or “horse-fetter”) continued to be of interest for their geometric properties, as is known through remarks by Proclus. Later geometers continued the search for geometric patterns satisfying the Platonic conditions. The simplest model, a scheme of circular orbits centred on the Sun, was introduced by Aristarchus of Samos (3rd century bce), but this was rejected by others, since a moving Earth was judged to be impossible on physical grounds. But Aristarchus’s scheme could have suggested use of an “eccentric” model, in which the planets rotate about the Sun and the Sun in turn rotates about the Earth. Apollonius introduced an alternative “epicyclic” model, in which the planet turns about a point that itself orbits in a circle (the “deferent”) centred at or near Earth. As Apollonius knew, his epicyclic model is geometrically equivalent to an eccentric. These models were well adapted for explaining other phenomena of planetary motion. For instance, if Earth is displaced from the centre of a circular orbit (as in the eccentric scheme), the orbiting body will appear to vary in speed (appearing faster when nearer the observer, slower when farther away), as is in fact observed for the Sun, Moon, and planets. By varying the relative sizes and rotation rates of the epicycle and deferent, in combination with the eccentric, a flexible device may be obtained for representing planetary motion. (See Ptolemy’s model.)

Greek trigonometry and mensuration

After the 3rd century bce, mathematical research shifted increasingly away from the pure forms of constructive geometry toward areas related to the applied disciplines, in particular to astronomy. The necessary theorems on the geometry of the sphere (called spherics) were compiled into textbooks, such as the one by Theodosius (3rd or 2nd century bce) that consolidated the earlier work by Euclid and the work of Autolycus of Pitane (flourished c. 300 bce) on spherical astronomy. More significant, in the 2nd century bce the Greeks first came into contact with the fully developed Mesopotamian astronomical systems and took from them many of their observations and parameters (for example, values for the average periods of astronomical phenomena). While retaining their own commitment to geometric models rather than adopting the arithmetic schemes of the Mesopotamians, the Greeks nevertheless followed the Mesopotamians’ lead in seeking a predictive astronomy based on a combination of mathematical theory and observational parameters. They thus made it their goal not merely to describe but to calculate the angular positions of the planets on the basis of the numerical and geometric content of the theory. This major restructuring of Greek astronomy, in both its theoretical and practical respects, was primarily due to Hipparchus (2nd century bce), whose work was consolidated and further advanced by Ptolemy.

To facilitate their astronomical researches, the Greeks developed techniques for the numerical measurement of angles, a precursor of trigonometry, and produced tables suitable for practical computation. Early efforts to measure the numerical ratios in triangles were made by Archimedes and Aristarchus. Their results were soon extended, and comprehensive treatises on the measurement of chords (in effect, a construction of a table of values equivalent to the trigonometric sine) were produced by Hipparchus and by Menelaus of Alexandria (1st century ce). These works are now lost, but the essential theorems and tables are preserved in Ptolemy’s Almagest (Book I, chapter 10). For computing with angles, the Greeks adopted the Mesopotamian sexagesimal method in arithmetic, whence it survives in the standard units for angles and time employed to this day.