Carpus of

Antioch Antioch on the Orontes (; , ) "Antioch on Daphne"; or "Antioch the Great"; ; ; ; ; ; ; . was a Hellenistic Greek city founded by Seleucus I Nicator in 300 BC. One of the most important Greek cities of the Hellenistic period, it served as ...

() was an ancient

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. It is not certain when he lived; he may have lived any time between the 2nd century BC and the 2nd century AD. He wrote on

mechanics Mechanics () is the area of physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among Physical object, physical objects. Forces applied to objects may result in Displacement (vector), displacements, which are changes of ...

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

, and

geometry Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician w ...

Proclus Proclus Lycius (; 8 February 412 – 17 April 485), called Proclus the Successor (, ''Próklos ho Diádokhos''), was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophers of late antiquity. He set forth one of th ...

quotes from an ''Astronomical Treatise'' by Carpus concerning whether problems should come before theorems, in which Carpus may (or may not) have been criticising

Geminus Geminus of Rhodes (), was a Greek astronomer and mathematician, who flourished in the 1st century BC. An astronomy work of his, the ''Introduction to the Phenomena'', still survives; it was intended as an introductory astronomy book for students ...

. Proclus also quotes the view of Carpus that "an

angle In Euclidean geometry, an angle can refer to a number of concepts relating to the intersection of two straight Line (geometry), lines at a Point (geometry), point. Formally, an angle is a figure lying in a Euclidean plane, plane formed by two R ...

is a quantity, namely a distance between the lines of surfaces containing it." According to Pappus, Carpus made use of mathematics for practical applications. According to

Iamblichus Iamblichus ( ; ; ; ) was a Neoplatonist philosopher who determined a direction later taken by Neoplatonism. Iamblichus was also the biographer of the Greek mystic, philosopher, and mathematician Pythagoras. In addition to his philosophical co ...

, Carpus also constructed a curve for the purpose of

squaring the circle Squaring the circle is a problem in geometry first proposed in Greek mathematics. It is the challenge of constructing a square (geometry), square with the area of a circle, area of a given circle by using only a finite number of steps with a ...

, which he calls a curve generated by a double motion.Iamblichus, quoted in Simplicius, ''Categories'', 192.19

Notes

References

*Thomas Little Heath, ''A History of Greek Mathematics'', page 428. Courier Dover Publications. *Michael Taunton, (2001), ''Surveying Instruments of Greece and Rome'', pages 33–34. Cambridge University Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:Carpus Of Antioch Ancient Greek astronomers Ancient Greek mathematicians