In
Turkije werd in december 2012 aan de Yildiz Universiteit in Istanbul
een conferentie gehouden over “Proclus Diadochus of Constantinople
and his Abrahamic Interpreters.” Dat werd gedaan ter herinnering
aan het 1600e geboortejaar van dit vierde laatste hoofd van de
Platoonse Academie.
Over
Proclus Diadochus lezen we in Piet Steenbakker's Ethica from
Manuscript to Print
“When
speaking of the so-called 'Euclidean' model, it should be noted that
this is the result of a long historical process of transmission,
reception and interpretation, rather than the conscious creation of
Euclid. The captions over the principles – 'definitions',
'postulates', 'axioms' – are interpolations of a later date. The
clean-cut, systematic differentiation between them is mainly the work
of Proclus Diadochus (fifth century CE). In a commentary on the first
book, the latter construed the Elements as an axiomatic
system, with the three types of principles on the one hand, and
propositions (problems, theorems) deduced from them on the other. The
commentary had its editio princeps together with the Greek text of
Euclid's Elements in 1533 and played an important part in the
debates on method in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its
account of Euclid's method is in fact an attempt to fuse the
practical application of the deductive system of the Elements with
Aristotelian notions of scientific procedures as set forth in the
Analytica posteriora. This is also reflected in Proclus'
choice of terminology.” [blz. 140]
