I wrote:
>I have the book by Szabo (in German), and read it years ago, but I don't
>remember what he says about Theaetetus. I'll have a look when I get around
>to it. My memory of the central point of that book was to demonstrate
>relationships between music theory and geometry, especially with regard to
>incommensurability.
>
Good grief, I've just looked at the book *Anfaenge der griechischen
Mathematik* (1969) by Arpad Szabo, and find that he has an exhaustive (and
ehausting) discussion of Plato's *Theatetus*, or as he spells it closer to
Greek *Theaitetos*. I recall now that I read this book after I had done my
Theaetetusinvestigation, nearly 40 years ago. I remember now being pleased
that someone else besides me and Reidemeister had come to doubt the
traditional stories about Theaetetus.
Here is a conluding paragraph by Szabo:
"Ich brauche wohl nicht noch einmal zu betonen, dass der Platonische
Theaietetos in Wirklichkeit nicht neues gefunden hatte. Aber Platon liess
ihn dennoch in dem Sinne reden, als handelte es sich hier um eine "eigen
Entdeckung" des jungen Mannes. Sein Theaitetos scheint in der Tat der
Ansicht gewesen zu sein, er haette eine neue wissenschaftliche Entdeckung
voellig auf eigene Faust."
That is:
"I no doubt don't have to emphasize again that the Platonic Theaetetus
actually had discovered nothing new. On the other hand, Plato can be
interpreted as treating here a "personal discovery" of the young man. In
fact, his Theaetetus appears to be of the opinion that he had made a new
scientific discovery completely on his own."
Let me add that I now recall that during my investigation of the
authenticity of the Theaetetus stories, I half-heartedly considered trying
to wend my way to Istanbul to look in libraries for a manuscript or
palimpsest which contained the apparently lost history of mathematics by
Eudemus, because I had found a single line in a translation from Arabic of
somebody's remarks (was it Proclus? Pappus?) which might have been based on
Eudemus's history, and which couldn't quite handily be squared with the
kind of interpration of the *Theaetetus* we're discussing here. I found an
Arabic scholar at Princeton who kindly checked the translation from Arabic
for me. I was cheered to start with when this scholar said, before he
looked at the passage, that he could well believe that this translator had
made a mistake. However, after he looked at the passage, he said the
translation was good. So somebody else made the mistake, if mistake it was.
Gordon Fisher gfisher@shentel.net