ABSTRACT
While early Pythagorean mathematics was based on the concept of numbers, after the discovery of incommensurables classical mathematics developed, as we have seen, mainly in a geometrical way. All the same many geometrical discoveries of the ancients can be immediately translated into analytical terms; that happened, for instance, to Apollonius's work on conics, which Descartes particularly admired, although he does not mention Strabo (1) (about 63 B.C. to A.D. 25), whose geographical co-ordinates foreshadowed analytical geometry, or N. Oresme, with his diagrams; while his mention of Marino Ghetaldi, who is remembered as a forerunner of analytical geometry, does not seem to show the influence of his thought.
