Archimedes

a certain method, which, when you see it, will put you in possession of a means whereby you can investigate some of the problems of mathematics by mechanics. This procedure is, I am persuaded, no less

useful for the proofs of the actual theorems as well. For certain things which first became clear to me by a mechanical method had afterwards to be demonstrated by geometry, because their investigation by the said method did not furnish an actual demonstration. But it is of course easier, when we have previously acquired by the method some knowledge of the questions, to supply the proof than it is to find the proof without any previous knowledge.

This is a reason why, in the case of the theorems the proof of which Eudoxus was the first to discover, namely, that the cone is a third part of the cylinder, and the pyramid a third part of the prism, having the same base and equal height, we should give no small share of the credit to Democritus, who was the first to assert this truth with regard to the said figures, though he did not prove it.

I am myself in the position of having made the discovery of the theorem now to be published in the same way as I made my earlier discoveries;

and I thought it desirable now to write out and publish the method, partly because I have already spoken of it and I do not want to be thought to have uttered vain words, but partly also because I am persuaded that it will be of no little service to mathematics; for I apprehend that some, either of my contemporaries or of my successors, will, by means of the method when once established, be able to discover other theorems in addition, which have not occurred to me.

“First then I will set out the very first theorem which became known to me by means of mechanics, namely, that Any segment of a section of a right-angled cone [i.e. a parabola] is four-thirds of the triangle which has the same base and equal height; and after this I will give each of the other theorems investigated by