Geometry, Topology and Global Analysis

The terms synthesis and analysis are used in mathematics in a more special sense than in logic. In ancient mathematics they had a different meaning from what they now have. The oldest definition of mathematical analysis as opposed to synthesis is that given in Euclid, XIII. 5, which in all probability was framed by Eudoxus: "Analysis is the obtaining of the thing sought by assuming it and so reasoning up to an admitted truth; synthesis is the obtaining of the thing sought by reasoning up to the inference and proof of it."

Vieta presented his analytic art as "the new algebra" and took its name from the ancient mathematical method of "analysis", which he understood to have been first discovered by Plato and so named by Theon of Smyrna. Ancient analysis is the 'general' half of a method of discovering the unknown in geometry; the other half, "synthesis", being particular in character. The method was defined by Theon like this: analysis is the "taking of the thing sought as granted and proceeding by means of what follows to a truth that is uncontested"'. Synthesis, in turn, is "taking the thing that is granted and proceeding by means of what follows to the conculsion and comprehension of the thing sought" (Vietae 1992: 320). The transition from analysis to synthesis was called "conversion", depending on whether the discovery of the truth of a geometrical theorem or the solution ("construction") to a geometrical problem was being demonstrated, the analysis was called respectively "theoretical" or "problematical".

Analysis and synthesis, though commonly treated as two different methods, are, if properly understood, only the two necessary parts of the same method. Each is the relative and correlative of the other.