Talk:Archimedes

Crown or wreath?
Re this edit: There are not many versions of the story that refer to "Archimedes and the golden wreath"; I've never come across this before. This is because Vitruvius uses the word corona, which is usually translated into English as crown. As Chris Rorres points out, other historical research suggests that the crown would likely have been in the shape of a wreath.. Since Vitruvius does not give the exact shape of the crown, there is some WP:OR in assuming that it would have been a wreath, so it is safer not to put it into his voice.  ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 11:08, 25 June 2023 (UTC)


 * In the French cartoon Once Upon a Time... The Discoverers, the crown is shown as having a crown like shape. But we don't know, and this may be historically inaccurate.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 11:28, 25 June 2023 (UTC)


 * The etymology of the word "crown", Latin corona, is indeed complex (see here ). Our image of a crown (e.g., The Crown) likely descends from the ancient diadem, not the wreath. Diadems began to replace wreaths as symbols of power and victory towards the end of Late Antiquity, as the ancient games, where wreaths were used, were no longer held sometime in the 5th century AD (see here and here for some examples). Vitruvius, however, lived in the 1st century BC, and for his readers a corona meant in all likelihood a wreath. In any case, this is too intricate for a regular reader to know, and your solution (i.e. mentioning the crown was likely a votive wreath) is sensible enough and should suffice for now. Thanks. -- Guillermind81 (talk) 16:01, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
In the new Indiana Jones film Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Jones goes on a search for the Archimedes Dial, a device capable of time travel. It is based on the Antikythera mechanism. This hasn't been added to the article yet, because the film is not released until 30 June in the USA. It probably will get added, but it runs into problems with WP:POPCULTURE, because it is not directly related to Archimedes other than the name, and there is no evidence that Archimedes designed the Antikythera mechanism.  ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 09:09, 28 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree with your assessment, as there was never an "Archimedes dial" and certainly not one that can travel through time. We do not know who built the Antikythera mechanism either but the evidence collected suggest it was likely not Archimedes. I know the temptation that adding such cultural references could bring more traffic to the article but I think popular cultural references that are so incidental to the person of Archimedes (such as that of the latest Indiana Jones movie) are better housed elsewhere. -- Guillermind81 (talk) 02:56, 6 July 2023 (UTC)


 * The release of the film worked wonders for the page views of this article, up from an average of around 2,500 a day to over 30,000 on 2 July. It's probably the first time that Archimedes has been a character in a big budget Hollywood movie, and he is played by Nasser Memarzia. The key WP:POPCULTURE requirement is sourcing showing why something is notable, and the film has very little to do with the actual work of Archimedes.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 07:14, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Remove metal bar demonstration (not relevant and explanation is wrong)
The section Archimedes' principle (anectode about volume of gold crown and bath; permalink) includes a demonstration. I am proposing to remove this demonstration because it is not related to the corresponding text, and because the explanation in the caption is incorrect:


 * The demonstration is related to Archimedes' principle (separate article), but it's not related to the anecdote in question (which is only about using displacement to measure volume). The idea that "the submerged crown would displace an amount of water equal to its own volume" is so simple that I don't think it requires any demonstration, and the current demonstration only creates confusion because it is counterintuitive and not related to the text.

-- Hddqsb (talk) 16:54, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The caption says "A metal bar, placed into a container of water on a scale, displaces as much water as its own volume, increasing the mass of the container's contents and weighing down the scale." This is is incorrect. To see why, suppose the metal bar was replaced by an object of the same shape but with near-zero density. The container would still lower, even though no mass is "added" (whatever that means). The correct explanation is buoyancy: the water exerts an upward force on the object proportional to the displaced volume, and by Newton's Third Law the object exerts an equal and opposite force on the water, pushing the container down. The description of the file explains this correctly.


 * The story told by Vitruvius says only that Archimedes noticed that the water level of the bath rose as he got in, which is displacement of a fluid, and could be used to measure the volume of the crown. The video isn't what Vitruvius said so it is not a direct illustration. I also think that the video could be removed without a great loss. The illustration of the screw in the water is what Vitruvius actually says.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 18:31, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
 * That illustration is perfect, thanks for finding it! (I did look earlier but couldn't find anything.) I'll go ahead and replace the video with this illustration in a couple of days if there are no objections. -- Hddqsb (talk) 08:03, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I've gone ahead and swapped the video for the new image. Displacement-measurement.svg was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in April 2022 so it is a relatively new image there. It does fit in with the text of the Vitruvius anecdote a lot better than the video.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 09:51, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! -- Hddqsb (talk) 15:54, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Arcamidus was born in siracuse Sicily was not greek
arcamidus was born in siracuse Sicily was Sicilian 51.155.64.194 (talk) 09:05, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

FA Criteria
This article is deeply below FA standards, and unless immense and extensive improvements are made, it should go to WP:FAR. This may all sound harsh, but that's because the issues are so woven into the article's structure that most, if not all, sections would need to be completely rewritten to meet FA standards. I understand that various editors have attempted to maintain this page over the yeas, but its existing structure from the 2007 nomination has deeply limited such efforts.

There is poor sourcing all throughout; aside from non-existent citation formatting and sporadic page numbers, random web sources of highly variable notability are consistently prioritized over academic scholarship. In fact, I can't see that a single contemporary book-length survey of Archimedes is even touched, let a lone used extensively—why are they all in the further reading!

There are way too many references in the lead (see WP:LEADCITE), which seems to imply that the lead and the body are not matched at all. The lead includes no biographical information, and its structure is very difficult to follow.

The Biography section pulls directly and extensively from ancient sources, without any filtering through modern commentary. Citations are sporadic and inconsistent. The discoveries and mathematics sections are extremely choppy and brief. Every single work of his does not need its own subsection just to include two (usually uncited) sentences. The legacy section is merely a list of length quotes and random trivia; no information on his actual influence into later mathematics is explained.

There is much more to say, but in conclusion I'm afraid the issues are rather extreme.  Aza24  (talk)   20:20, 27 June 2024 (UTC)


 * We don't know much about the life of Archimedes and everything we do know was written long after his death; the article makes this clear. I'm not sure how "filtering through modern commentary" would help, as he has been dead for over two thousand years. This is a weird argument to make.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 08:03, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi there, this is a rather revealing point to harp on, and I highly recommend you take a look at some recent FAs (Leucippus, for instance) and read WP:Primary. Every featured article needs to be "a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature; claims are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources and are supported by inline citations where appropriate". Primary sources are simply not allowed in place of suitable secondary ones. You can disagree with this all you like, but you will find that no reviewers will agree. The aforementioned Leucippus, for example, has a biography section only citing academic articles and books from the last 20 years (albeit a single one from 1979).
 * Yes, "he has been dead for over two thousand years"—exactly! So scholars have had two thousand years to analyze, update and revise his biography! Would you really claim that there are no scholars which have altered, changed, updated, reinterpreted his biography from 2000 year old accounts?
 * I understand it is easy to see my comments as "[weird] argument[s]", but this is a misunderstanding. I am citing real and rather egregious issues, after having review hundreds of articles for FAC & FAR, in content and source reviews. This article falls extremely flat, and defending it will take you no where, unfortunately.  Aza24  (talk)   18:07, 28 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Sorry, this is still a weird argument. We know very little about the life of Archimedes other than what was said by Roman historians many years after his death. I'm not sure what these "modern sources" are supposed to be, perhaps you could find them if it is such a problem. I don't have access to specialist academic libraries or paywalled academic resources, so it is hard for me to know exactly what you want here. We know that many of the things said by the Roman historians are likely to be apocryphal, which is why they are treated with caution.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 18:28, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * "which is why they are treated with caution" — they shouldn't be treated at all... that's WP:Original Research, please read WP:Primary, we do not interpret primary sources on Wikipedia. This is a tertiary encyclopedia that summarizes secondary sources. We don't cite from Roman sources directly, period, and we definitely do not in featured articles.
 * Where are the modern sources? How about the huge Further reading section that includes multiple major recent surveys? Why is not a single one of them included? How can this be "a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature; claims are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources and are supported by inline citations where appropriate"?  Aza24  (talk)   18:44, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * A lot of the sourcing in Leucippus seems to be from specialist academic sources. I don't have easy access to this type of material and people who want to read the sources for themselves would also have this problem. However, I accept your point on this.-- ♦Ian Ma c  M♦  (talk to me) 18:57, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I appreciate that. Certainly that material is more difficult to access, but nowadays there are more resources for that. GoogleBooks includes extensive previews, and Archive.org is a goldmine for academic sources. You'll see that the further reading section already includes quite a few links to archive.org copies, which are freely available to borrow (sometimes a free registration is needed).  Aza24  (talk)   19:17, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Aza24, @Ianmacm. Sounds like a heated discussion is occurring. I pinged both WP:WPM and WP:PHY for more opinions. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:30, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It would help if someone dug up recent scholarly work that evaluated the traditional tales and checked them for consistency, plausibility, etc. Something like what the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy does for Pythagoras. I don't see a fundamental problem with our reporting "Cicero said..." as long as we have further, modern sources to contextualize that. Nothing in the WP:NOR policy forbids judicious use of primary sources. (Indeed, I'd actually fault the Leucippus article for not giving direct pointers to editions/translations of the ancient sources; that's mildly inconvenient! When we say, for example, Plato explored cosmological ideas similar to those of Leucippus in the dialogue Timaeus, a reader shouldn't have to get a paywalled journal article to find which sections of the Timaeus are relevant.) XOR&#39;easter (talk) 04:54, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Leucippus doesn't even try to link to the source texts where its claims originate. This does a disservice to readers, because it makes them jump through hoops to figure out what was actually said. I imagine in most if not all cases there are online scans of these texts and probably also translations. Frankly I am not impressed. All of the content is along the lines of "So-and-so says Leucippus says XYZ" where so-and-so was writing a few centuries after Leucippus, but then the link shows that Wikipedia's text is a paraphrase of some paywalled academic paper where the author paraphrased an earlier Greek/Roman source who was paraphrasing Leucippus, so what Wikipedia readers are getting is 4 steps removed from the original. This helps tick off FA boxes, and might help scholars looking for a list of recent works to cite, but readers would probably be better off with a direct quotation of the oldest extant work or a translation. –jacobolus (t) 04:54, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The sourcing in Leucippus has a high gloss sheen, but if someone wanted to actually read and verify the cites it would be very difficult. I have tried to stick to easy to follow cites, not what someone said about it on page 336 of an obscure or paywalled academic work.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 06:43, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree overall with jacobolus and Ian, and appreciate the "high gloss sheen" comment in particular. I think there is no problem citing ancient sources appropriately in the biographical sections. While I haven't looked that closely, everything I looked at sourced to an ancient source also had a secondary source nearby. E.g., Something about ancient source [ footnote to ancient source ]. Another sentence or two.[ footnote to secondary source ]

There are some sourcing issues to be sure (which are very easy to fix!) The mathematics section needs better sources, as there are some paragraphs lacking footnotes. But this material is so standard as to be found in tertiary sources like Kline, or Boyer and Merzbach. Perhaps the sections in Archimedes works each should be individually referenced with a footnote to the Heath source (which provides commentary, and therefore is a secondary source on the works of Archimedes), as this remains the standard modern reference for Archimedes works. Only the palimpsest, which post-dates Heath, needs to be referenced separately (which it is). In any case, concerns over the lack of sourcing of this section are overwrought, considering the extremely high quality references Knorr and Sato that are very explicitly intended to support the section as a whole.

The "Legacy" section is also very weak. It's hard to overstate the continuing legacy of Archimedes in mathematics: one could go so far as to say that he invented mathematics as we know it. The section doesn't even try. Tito Omburo (talk) 11:46, 29 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Primary sources are not the main problem here. It is the lack of academic secondary sources (which extends to the entire article). The FA criteria are explicit in asking for "a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature". Outside of the lead, there is a single book on Archimedes sourced. The result is highly noticeable in the article, as you point out, the mathematics sections and legacy are surprisingly sparse, and the reliance on solely primary sources (or not sources) for large swathes of text is not ideal.
 * These academic sources are not niche or hard-to-acess. Archimedes lists multiple works by clearly established historians, and includes direct links to archive.org which is freely available. If one wants to actually engage in a "thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature", this will include academic sources which are sometimes difficult to access. That's why Wikipedia exists, to make such information more accessible.
 * If I only used web/non-academic sources when I wrote the now-FA Cai Lun, it would have been a paragraph long, maybe two. You'll see that I linked almost every page number to google books: readers can click on any one and immediately find the information. How is this difficult to access? By the way, I regularly used plenty of primary sources in Cai Lun and found no issues at FAC; this is because I paired each one with a secondary source, which is certainly more advisable (and productive) than sole reliance on primary sources.
 * In any case, there seems to be some confusion. I'm not saying this is a bad article, or even that the sourcing is bad, I'm saying that it does not match the Featured article criteria. Alas, these are two very different things, and you are all welcome to (rather bizarrely) dig on Leucippus all you want, but it reflects the reality of what FAs are now a-days.  Aza24  (talk)   18:18, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Where is there reliance exclusively on primary sources? Tag some specific problems, please.  A side note is that many of the sources listed in further reading are very pulpy.  E.g., Netz and Noel is not a scholarly or academic source, and some of the others are, rather more obviously, probably not good references.  Boyer is a tertiary source, generally good (I suggested above for the mathematics section), but there are better secondary sources.  Clagett is a very good source, but also specifically focuses on mathematics in the middle ages, and is incredibly detailed: we already cite his survey article on this topic.  I think the Dijksterhuis is a good source, particularly for the life of Archimedes, that could be used for some of the history section, and also for the mathematics section.  Tito Omburo (talk) 18:45, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Almost the entire biography is exclusively relying on primary sources; please note that these "Rorres, Chris" citations are just a web page with a public domain translation of Greek authors.
 * The biography's first paragraph does not have primary sources; it includes a source from 1897 (?), a 1975 journal article and a dictionary entry, the latter two being some of the only scholarship in the whole section. The last sentence is uncited.
 * The biography's second paragraph is only primary sources
 * The biography's third paragraph is only primary sources (save for the line "He also mentions that Marcellus brought to Rome two planetariums Archimedes built")
 * The biography's fourth paragraph is only primary sources, save for the its last line (I checked the Jaeger source and it only covers the last line).
 * The biography's final paragraph is only primary sources
 * Now this is just a single section, I suspect there are plenty of others. Other examples (from a glance) include the first paragraph of the Heat ray section and the second paragraph of the Astronomical instruments. –  Aza24  (talk)   18:59, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I'm not trying to rag on Leucippus, which is certainly above average for Wikipedia articles; it was just your example of exceptional citation formatting, but I don't really like the style with a plethora of footnotes often crammed together but none of them giving any detail or quotations, and in my opinion the primary sources are essential to cite in this kind of article, but there are missing. Your focus on sources from the past decade or two also seems misplaced. To my knowledge Archimedes isn't a subject of such rapid historiographical change that commentary from 50, 100, or 1000 years ago is necessarily obsolete.
 * In any event, it's a somewhat apples-to-oranges comparison because Archimedes is a dramatically more productive, known-about, and influential figure than Leucippus. I agree with you that this article is far from comprehensive, but on the other hand if it were expanded to the level of detail found in Leucippus or Cai Lun relative to the amount of available material about Archimedes, it would be probably 5x longer than currently – the mathematics section alone would be longer than the current article – and we'd have people complaining that GA/FAs need to be short enough to read in one sitting or whatever.
 * Anyway... Do you have some specific recommended recent literature that you think should be added here? One thing I'd like to see in particular is some discussion of Archimedes' influence on the mathematics and science of the medieval Islamic world, which is currently unmentioned. –jacobolus (t) 20:25, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * One source people may want to look at with some counterfactual speculation about Archimedes' influence is the recent issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (Volume 47 Issue 3-4, 2022), edited by Chemla, which involved a paper by Netz, "The place of Archimedes in world history", accompanied by responses from 13 other scholars. Wikipedia editors with moderate experience can access these via The Wikipedia Library at https://journals-sagepub-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/toc/idsa/47/3-4 –jacobolus (t) 00:22, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Another possibly useful source relevant to Archimedes' influence is the 2010 conference proceedings The Genius of Archimedes edited by Paipetis and Ceccarelli. –jacobolus (t) 02:25, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Does anyone have the energy to find page numbers in Dijksterhuis, Heath, etc.? Citing these long books without more specifics seems a bit mean to readers. –jacobolus (t) 01:45, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Here are my two cents: Netz has been publishing and translating Archimedes for over two decades, but almost everything worth reading from him is behind paywalls and he believes writing a "biography" of Archimedes is pointless. Knorr is better overall but his work is behind even more impenetrable paywalls. Heath is terribly outdated and should be used with caution, while Dijksterhuis is about the best your regular, "I don't work for academia" person could have access right now. Believer or not, Heiberg's work still holds on and its packed with lots of good textual and biographical information but you'll have to read German (and Latin!) to make sense of it. Bottom line, the best sources are the most esoteric, hard to reach ones, while the popular sources are often worth crap.
 * I do agree the article needs a major Enterprise "refit" to keep it FA worthy, just wanted you to know what we might be up against.
 * -- Guillermind81 (talk) 04:43, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Dijksterhuis (which I only skimmed parts of) seems like an excellent source, and the consensus seems to be that it is the best available biography. I think we should pull it out in a new section of "Works Cited" or whatever, and then liberally add footnotes citing specific chapters and pages for every currently unsourced section of this article. It's kind of a lot of grunt work, but especially if we include links to a scan (the IA scan is unfortunately "borrow unavailable, presumably by request of Princeton Univ. Press) should be at least moderately helpful to readers, and might satisfy some of the footnote police. –jacobolus (t) 05:29, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Heat ray section
Quick aside [from the FA criteria discussion above], @Guillermind81 semi-reverted my direct quotation of Lucian "Archimedes 'burned the enemy ships by means of his skill' " and replaced it with just "Archimedes burned enemy ships", in. Personally I think the direct quotation is helpful here, since the unquoted version makes it sound like we're paraphrasing a comment talking about focusing reflectors per se, whereas the direct quotation makes it clear that Lucian didn't include any specifics other than crediting "skill" (techne) [it might even be worth quoting as "burned the enemy ships by means of his techne" or "burned the enemy ships by means of his skill"]. I understand that we're trying to keep this brief here and offload details to the (currently mediocre and incomplete) Archimedes' heat ray, but we also want to try to give readers the least misleading brief summary we can. What do other folks think? –jacobolus (t) 05:17, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The reason why it may read like that is the preceding sentence about Diocles that was not originally there. I'm all for taking Diocles out, rather than add even more stuff to this, as I keep arguing the discussion better belongs to the Archimedes heat ray entry. Maybe our efforts should divert there if said article is not up to par.
 * -- Guillermind81 (talk) 05:38, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I do appreciate your effort to keep this brief. Perhaps someone else has an idea how to make a few sentence summary that conveys that there's no contemporaneous evidence about the "heat ray" and 2nd century mentions point to some kind of incendiary (perhaps some precursor to Greek fire or the like) but by ~600 AD there was apparently an established legend about reflectors and ships. –jacobolus (t) 05:46, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Africa 1975 says: «In the Hellenistic age, scientists such as Apollonius and Diocles were interested in the theoretical aspects of burning mirrors and may have experimented with them,10 but there is no reference to the practical application of a heat ray in warfare until the second half of the second century A.D. when Lucian mentions in passing that Archimedes burned ships "with his skill" (Hippias 2). Lucian did not identify the weapon, and Galen is the first author to specify mirrors as the source of heat. II Where he picked up the story is not known, but it was commonplace among scholars of the time to attribute all manner of wonders to famed sages of the past. Galen's younger contemporary, Cassius Dio, was also aware of the mirrors, for Zonaras (9.4) mentions them in his epitome of Dio's Fifteenth Book.» But I am not sure if this is an entirely accurate summary. –jacobolus (t) 05:54, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * That's accurate as far as tracing the complicated history of a "scientific" fable goes, and yes most of the time it's a game of broken telephone. But why burden the reader with all of this? Scholars have to make a living after all, sure, but I fail to see how this information will serve the reader. Guillermind81 (talk) 06:04, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The apocryphal story of the "heat ray" has clearly been of interest to readers, and it's worth being clear that it's a legend that is surely made up. I agree the details might be unnecessary here. I'd be fine with condensing the whole section down to a paragraph or so, delegating some details to a couple of footnotes and the rest to Archimedes' heat ray. I'm just not sure what that paragraph should say. Maybe we should be leading along the lines of, "As legend has it, Archimedes focused the light of the sun using large mirrors and set Roman ships ablaze at the siege of Syracuse..." –jacobolus (t) 06:09, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I propose we leave the section as is for now and let others weigh in before editing any more. It's getting late and I don't want us to inadvertently start the next Great Edit War. Guillermind81 (talk) 06:15, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I took another crack at it. Is that any better? –jacobolus (t) 10:27, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Looks OK to me (one of the links was dead but salvageable). XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:30, 12 July 2024 (UTC)