Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 08:59:24 -0400
To: athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: calculus (logismos?) in the *Phaedrus*

Steven J. Willett wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 20 May 1996 23:43:39 -0500 (EST) Gordon Fisher wrote:
> 
> > Hackforth has in section 274B of the *Phaedrus*:

> > He it was that invented number and calculation, geometry and
> > astronomy, not to speak of draughts and dice, and above all writing.
> >  ..... "
> >
> > I don't have a Greek version at hand, but I suspect the word
> > translated here as "calculation" is "logismos" whose meaning
> > according to Liddell & Scott's abridged lexicon is "reckoning,
> > computation."  II. consideration, reasoning, reflexion: a
> > conclusion."
> >
> 
> The word is indeed "logismos" in the clause "touton dh prwton
> arithmon te kai logismon heurein kai gewmetrian kai astronomian,..."
> 
> Here it means calculation.  Elsewhere Plato uses it in the phrase a
> "calculation of the cause" (e.g. "Gorgias" 98a3), meaning to provide
> the facts that justify an opinion (doxa) and make it true.  More or
> less this is "reasoning" in the second definition from LSJ above.

Not having Greek in my scholastic arsenal, I hesitate to suggest
the obvious hypothesis that "logismos" might mean "logic", in the
sense of logical *calculation* or reasoning, ie. "axiomatic method",
or explicit reasoning from premise to conclusion.  

Of course, that interpretation would require giving credit to the 
Egyptians for that method which we are told is the exclusive invention
of the Greeks, and moreover the key Greek contribution that
distinguished Greek mathematics from that of the "empirical" Egyptians.  

> Steven J. Willett
>
Regards,

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