The top layer of writing in this 700-year-old book describes Christian prayers. But underneath, almost obliterated, are the only surviving copies of many of the works of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes.

The British Library may have recently wrapped up it’s popular exhibit of medieval illuminated manuscripts but another medieval prayer book is in the news. Subject of the new book titled The Archimedes Codex by Reviel Netz and William Noel, the prayer book was written in the year 1300 by an unknown monk. Since parchment was in short supply those days (and expensive for a lowly monk) he “recycled” (technically known as creating a palimpsest) an animal-skin parchment which contained a copy of the original works of the master Greek mathematician Archimedes. By scraping off the original ink, cutting the parchment in half and rotating the whole thing 90 degrees, the monk then proceeded to write down his prayers.

400 years later the Danish philologist Johan Ludwig Heiberg discovered the prayer book at a library in Constantinople and after careful study with a microscope to see the faint Greek letters he made a transcription of the work but then put the book away where it was again lost for almost another 100. The book resurfaced again in 1998 after having been in the possession of a French family where the book had grown moldy and dusty in their closet. When they realized that the book might have some value they took it to the Christie’s Auction House of London where it was eventually auctioned for 2 million dollars to an anonymous buyer. The buyer then set about immediately to uncover the hidden text.

Discovering the text and drawings was no easy task as “researchers took digital pictures of it in different wavelengths of light, creating a multi-spectral image that could be manipulated to reveal the text by Archimedes. On four of the pages, forged paintings covered the entire text, so the researchers used x-ray fluorescence imaging to peek beneath the paintings and decipher the obscured text”.

The value of this prayer book is not just because it contains the works of Archimedes but that it contains “previously unknown texts by Archimedes”.

From Science News Online:

Two of the texts hiding in the prayer book have not appeared in any other copy of Archimedes’s work, so no one but Heiberg had studied them until now. One of them, titled The Method, has special historical significance. It could be considered the earliest known work on calculus.

Though modern calculus was not developed into its modern form until the 1700’s by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, the Archimedes text reveals just how advanced the ancient Greek master really was. Reviel Netz, one of the authors of The Archimedes Codex and a historian of mathematics at Stanford University says that the discovered work gives “a new twist on the entire trajectory of Western mathematics”.

Archimedes computed the area of the curved figure (left) by enclosing it in a bigger one with straight edges (right). He then examined random slices to compute the volume—using the concept of actual infinity.Archimedes computed the area of the curved figure (left) by enclosing it in a bigger one with straight edges (right). He then examined random slices to compute the volume—using the concept of actual infinity.

Archimedes found a relationship between the full area of that slice, which was a section through the plane-sided volume, and the smaller area within it, which was a section through the curved shape. Then he argued that he could use that relationship to calculate the entire volume of the curved shape, because both the curved figure and the straight one contained the same number of slices. That number just happened to be infinity—actual infinity.

“The interesting breakthrough is that he is completely willing to operate with actual infinity,” Netz says, but he adds that “the argument is definitely not completely valid. He just had a strong intuition that it should work.” In this case, it did work, but it remained for Newton and Leibniz to figure out how to make the argument mathematically rigorous.

Now imagine what the world would be like if religion, especially Christianity had not flourished. Imagine if the work of Archimedes had continued not 1900 years later when Newton and Leibniz made the final breakthrough but 1000 years before Newton - even earlier. What kind of world would we be living in today? Had Christians not burnt the works of the Greek masters, had religion not kept the western world in fear after the fall of the Roman empire for 1500 years and had the crusades not murdered so many in Islam who themselves were generations ahead in science and art we may well be living in a world that is 500-1000 years more advanced than it is today.

In an earlier post of mine that talks about other medieval manuscripts which contain similar scientific works, I made a comment (now lost due to a Wordpress upgrade, grrr) that religion, especially Christianity has done more harm to the development of the modern world because of artistic abuses like erasing older manuscripts for prayers and such. My comment drew the ire of many but in reality we have to accept the fact that religion and religious people tend to dismiss works of knowledge, reason and science in favor of dogma. Though I’m sure the monk who wrote the prayer book meant no real offense, his ignorance was born out of the religious attitude that all things not “godly” are worthless and can be defaced or destroyed at will.

These attitudes persist even to this day which is why we see so much fake science being heralded as truth and forced on our kids in school and on the general public by our governments (America included). And while science can’t solve all of the ills of the world and guarantee a better, more ethical and plentiful tomorrow, it can improve the lives of millions and enlighten a world that was formerly dark.

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