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Three Millennia of Greek Literature
 

T. L. Heath 
A History of Greek Mathematics and Astronomy

From, T. L. Heath, Mathematics and Astronomy,
in R.W. Livingstone (ed.), The Legacy of Greece, Oxford University Press, 1921.


It has been well said that, if we would study any subject properly, we must study it as something that is alive and growing and consider it with reference to its growth in the past. As most of the vital forces and movements in modern civilization had their origin in Greece, this means that, to study them properly, we must get back to Greece. So it is with the literature of modern countries, or their philosophy, or their art; we cannot study them with the determination to get to the bottom and understand them without the way pointing eventually back to Greece.

When we think of the debt which mankind owes to the Greeks, we are apt to think too exclusively of the masterpieces in literature and art which they have left us. But the Greek genius was many-sided; the Greek, with his insatiable love of knowledge, his determination to see things as they are and to see them whole, his burning desire to be able to give a rational explanation of everything in heaven and earth, was just as irresistibly driven to natural science, mathematics, and exact reasoning in general, or logic.


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