Archimedes’ Psammites and the Tradition of Italic Thought of Science

摘要

It is intended to confute the opinion of a Platonic Archimedes, through the study of the fundamental theses of his Sandreckoner (Psammites) and of its particular logical-linguistic aspects, but especially of an Aristotelic Archimedes, as Delsedine (1970) maintains in his article “L’infini numérique dans l’Arénaire d’Archimède”. He writes: The Sandreckonerrépond à la nécessitè d’adapter la notation numérique à l’idée de l’infinité potentielle de l’ensamble des nombres naturales”1. First, it is focused on the general aspects of the work, which highlight its Enlightenment and Py-thagorean—Democritean character, then it is passed to the analysis of its particular linguistic and logical aspects and of its fundamental theses, translated into symbolic form, in which it is still giving prominence to its Pythagorean-Democritean or Italic character (Boscarino, 1999, 2010, 2011, 2012).