This blows me away.
Did the Greeks ever imagine this?
Old Pi visited me last
week. Remember him from those old days in math class? I had not seen Pi in
decades, and he hasn't changed a bit, still 3.14 (and on and on), and he
decided to show up in my Real Estate Course.
The course gave us a measurement in feet and inches and a
diameter. The circumference of a circle is diameter times Pi--how did the
Greeks determine that? Now, said the study course, fill the area with cement—in
cubic yards. (Radius (1/2 the diameter) squared times Pi equals the
area.)
Am I studying to be a contractor or what?
I never thought to ask my Real Estate Agent how many cubic yards
of cement it would take to pour my driveway, and don’t you dare ask me.
I got to wondering about the Greeks. Probably Pi it was discovered
before Aristotle, Plato or Socrates for those philosophers focused more on the
human being than on mathematics or science. They could be called the
fathers of metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. And we think metaphysics is
new-age...
(Metaphysics simply means "Beyond physics." Wow,
imagine, the physicists have much yet to discover.)
You might ask why the Greeks influenced us more than some others
who were equally brilliant.
Those others often used Oral tradition. The
Greeks advantage was, they used the Alphabet.
They wrote.
It was the Greeks that educated the Romans and, and after the dark
ages, it was the records of the Greeks, kept and studied by the
Moslem, Jewish, and Christian monks, who educated Europe once again.
Thanks Greeks.We appreciate it.
Now, use the alphabet and write!
Forget the driveway—the
cement contractor can do that.
