History of calculus | Works by Archimedes | Archimedes
The Method of Mechanical Theorems
The Method of Mechanical Theorems (Greek: Περὶ μηχανικῶν θεωρημάτων πρὸς Ἐρατοσθένη ἔφοδος), also referred to as The Method, is one of the major surviving works of the ancient Greek polymath Archimedes. The Method takes the form of a letter from Archimedes to Eratosthenes, the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria, and contains the first attested explicit use of indivisibles (sometimes erroneously referred to as infinitesimals). The work was originally thought to be lost, but in 1906 was rediscovered in the celebrated Archimedes Palimpsest. The palimpsest includes Archimedes' account of the "mechanical method", so called because it relies on the center of weights of figures (centroid) and the law of the lever, which were demonstrated by Archimedes in On the Equilibrium of Planes. Archimedes did not admit the method of indivisibles as part of rigorous mathematics, and therefore did not publish his method in the formal treatises that contain the results. In these treatises, he proves the same theorems by exhaustion, finding rigorous upper and lower bounds which both converge to the answer required. Nevertheless, the mechanical method was what he used to discover the relations for which he later gave rigorous proofs. (Wikipedia).
