On the need to rewrite the history of Greek mathematics

Sabetai Unguru

pp. 385-431

in: Jean Christianidis (ed), Classics in the history of Greek mathematics, Berlin, Springer, 2004

Abstract

...the past has meaning only in terms of the present. The impartial recovery of the past, uncontaminated by the influence of the present, is held up as a professional ideal, and a criterion of technical competence is the degree to which this ideal is reached. This ideal is, I believe, impossible of attainment, and cannot even be formulated without involvement with meaningless verbalisms.5