Henry Mendell is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles (since 2022) and was most recently a visiting professor at UCLA (2019-2024) and Visiting Researcher at Bochum University (Fall, 2022). His research mostly concerns Aristotle and Plato, especially their views on mathematical sciences, as well as history of mathematics and astronomy in the ancient world. Besides Metaphysics I, he is currently working on Aristotle’s Physics, its structure and strategies; anti-dogmatic postures in so-called dogmatic dialogues of Plato, and Aristotle’s views on mathematical objects in Metaphysics M 1-3 and 6-9; the problem of generality in Greek mathematics, which will include a study of the treatment of the Eudoxan exhaustion proofs in the two manuscript traditions of 9th cent. Arabic translations of Euclid’s Elements; a study of ‘quantitative relations’ in Greek mathematical sciences, i.e. relations that can, in some way, be larger or smaller; as well as a long worked over projects on Aristotle on mathematics. He has a website which contains a broad swath of translations of texts of ancient mathematics each proposition accompanied by numerous diagrams that walk the reader through the construction and proof, as well as a trove of animations of ancient, astronomical models. Given that he is notorious for not completing projects, his current motto, post retirement, is: “Publish before you perish!"

Recent publications include

  • “Hero and the Tradition of the Circle Segment.” Archive for the History of the Exact Sciences (2023). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00407-023-00308-y
  • “Betwixt and Between: Plato and the objects of mathematics.” In David Ebrey and Richard Kraut, The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 358-398.
  • “Why did the Greeks Develop Proportion Theory: a conjecture.” In Michalis Sialaros, Revolutions and Continuity in Greek Mathematics (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 189-233.
  • “What’s Location Got to Do With It? Place, Space and the Infinite in Classical Greek mathematics.” In Vincenzo de Risi (ed.), Mathematizing Space: The Objects of Geometry from Antiquity to the Early Modern Age (Heidelberg: Birkhäuser, 2015), 15-63.

Some Representative Publications

  • Aristotle and Mathematics.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. First published, Fri 26 Mar, 2004 (URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-mathematics/
  • “The Trouble with Eudoxus.” In Pat Suppes, Julius Moravcsik, and Henry Mendell (eds.), Ancient and Medieval Traditions in the Exact Sciences: Essays in Memory of Wilbur Knorr (Stanford: CSLI (distr. University of Chicago Press), 2001), 59-138.
  • “Making Sense of Aristotelian Demonstration.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 16 (1998), 160-225.
  • “Topoi on Topos: the Development of Aristotle’s Theory of Place.” Phronesis 32 (1987): 206-231.