Page:Squaring the circle a history of the problem (IA squaringcirclehi00hobsuoft).djvu/24

 from that of a given circle by less than an arbitrarily prescribed magnitude, although we cannot pass to the limit. We can obtain solutions of the corresponding physical problem which leave nothing to be desired from the practical point of view. Such is the answer which has been obtained to the question raised in this celebrated historical problem of Geometry. I propose to consider in some detail the various modes in which the problem has been attacked by people of various races, and through many centuries; how the modes of attack have been modified by the progressive development of Mathematical tools, and how the final answer, the nature of which had been long anticipated by all competent Mathematicians, was at last found and placed on a firm basis.

The history of our problem is typical as exhibiting in a remarkable degree many of the phenomena that are characteristic of the history of Mathematical Science in general. We notice the early attempts at an empirical solution of the problem conceived in a vague and sometimes confused manner; the gradual transition to a clearer notion of the problem as one to be solved subject to precise conditions. We observe also the intimate relation which the mode of regarding the problem in any age had with the state then reached by Mathematical Science in its wider aspect; the essential dependence of the mode of treatment of the problem on the powers of the existing tools. We observe the fact that, as in Mathematics in general, the really great advances, embodying new ideas of far-reaching fruitfulness, have been due to an exceedingly small number of great men; and how a great advance has often been followed by a period in which only comparatively small improvements in, and detailed developments of, the new ideas have been accomplished by a series of men of lesser rank. We observe that there have been periods when for a long series of centuries no advance was made; when the results obtained in a more enlightened age have been forgotten. We observe the times of revival, when the older learning has been rediscovered, and when the results of the progress made in distant countries have been made available as the starting points of new efforts and of a fresh period of activity.

The history of our problem falls into three periods marked out by fundamentally distinct differences in respect of method, of immediate aims, and of equipment in the possession of intellectual tools. The first period embraces the time between the first records of empirical