 [this web page last updated 30 October 2010]
Apollonius of PergaConics, Books I-III Translation by R. Catesby Taliaferro
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The Conics of Apollonius (3rd Century BCE) is the culmination of the brilliant geometrical tradition of ancient Greece. With astonishing virtuosity, and with a storyteller's flair for thematic development, Apollonius leads the reader through the mysteries of these intriguing curved lines, treated as objects of pure mathematics. His work in turn provided a basis for the very differently conceived investigations of modern mathematicians and scientists such as Viète, Descartes, Kepler, and Newton. Reading the Conics is an unparalleled adventure into the highest reaches of human intellectual achievement.
This is a completely new edition of Taliaferro's translation of the first three books of Apollonius's Conics, with all new diagrams. It is the only English translation of these books other than Heath's out-of-print version which is a modernized retelling rather than a true translation.
Conics Books I--III were formerly included in Volume 11 of the Encyclopædia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World, but the work is no longer included in that series and has been out of print.
We made many corrections to the old edition's text, translation, and notes. The book features all new diagrams, an index, a bibliography, and an introductory essay by Harvey Flaumenhaft. Design and layout make it easy to read and work with, with diagrams repeated on every spread, adequate space for notes, and high quality paper to prevent show-through.
"Heath: If a straight line be drawn through the extremity of the diameter of any conic section parallel to the ordinates of that diameter, the straight line will touch the conic, and no other straight line can fall between it and the conic.
"Taliaferro/Donahue: If a straight line is drawn through the vertex of a section of a cone, parallel to an ordinate, it touches the section and in the place between the section of the cone and the straight line another straight line will not fall.
"Comparison with the Greek reveals the latter translation to be superior in all respects in which they differ, including the absence of modern algebraic symbolism.
"[Diagrams] have been executed with the reader in mind to maintain the simplicity and clarity of those in Commandino's Renaissance edition, but redrawn when necessary to avoid, for example, every diameter appearing to be an axis. They have also redone certain diagrams in perspective, and the result is quite useful. Another welcome feature for the reader interested in the mathematics or the history is that some of the more helpful parts of Eutocius's commentary on the Conics have been translated and reprinted as footnotes on the relevant pages."
---J. L. Berggren
Mathematical Reviews,
Issue 2000d
"[Apollonius's Conics] is one of the greatest scientific
books of antiquity." "[Apollonius was a] giant, not simply as compared
with men of antiquity, but even with men of all times. ... [T]he ingenuity
that enabled him to discover so much with imperfect tools [i.e., lacking
the arts of analytic and projective geometry] is truly admirable...such
achievements pass our imagination, they are almost weird."
Apollonius of Perga was probably born about 262 B.C.E. in Perga, on the southern coast of what is now Turkey. He flourished in Alexandria in the second half of the third century. He is best known for this treatise on conic sections.
View the first definitions and propositions of Book I.
Pp. xliii + 284. 7x10"
Sewn Softcover: List price $23.95
ISBN: 1-888009-05-5.
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