Viete

Arch. Hist. Exact Sci.
(2018) 72:245–302
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-018-0208-0
François Viète’s revolution in algebra
Jeffrey A. Oaks1
Received: 21 June 2017 / Published online: 16 April 2018

© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Françios Viète (1540–1603) was a geometer in search of better techniques

for astronomical calculation. Through his theorem on angular sections he found a use
for higher-dimensional geometric magnitudes which allowed him to create an alge-
bra for geometry. We show that unlike traditional numerical algebra, the knowns and
unknowns in Viète’s logistice speciosa are the relative sizes of non-arithmetized magni-
tudes in which the “calculations” must respect dimension. Along with this foundational
shift Viète adopted a radically new notation based in Greek geometric equalities. His
letters stand for values rather than types, and his given values are undetermined.
Where previously algebra was founded in polynomials as aggregations, Viète became
the first modern algebraist in working with polynomials built from operations, and the
notations reflect these conceptions. Viète’s innovations are situated in the context of
sixteenth-century practice, and we examine the interpretation of Jacob Klein, the only
historian to have conducted a serious inquiry into the ontology of Viète’s “species”.
1 Introduction
Anyone who masters the basics of algebra by studying one book printed before 1590
can jump to another without difficulty. Whether the book is by Niccolò Tartaglia,
Valentin Mennher, Jacques Peletier, or Rafael Bombelli, one is presented with the
nomenclature and notation for the powers of the unknown, operations on polynomi-
Communicated by: Niccolò Guicciardini.
B Jeffrey A. Oaks
oaks@uindy.edu
1 Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Indianapolis, 1400 E. Hanna Ave.,

Indianapolis, IN 46227, USA
123
246 J. A. Oaks
als, and the simplification and solutions of equations, usually together with arithmetical
rules such as operations on roots. I am not considering here novel or more difficult
aspects of algebra, like Bombelli’s treatment of cubic equations and imaginary num-
bers. I mean the basic elements of algebra as a problem-solving technique. The wide
variety of notations and even terminology in these books mask the fact that the algebras
they present are all conceptually and structurally compatible.
Then there is François Viète (1540–1603). Viète was a French lawyer in the court
of Henry IV who conducted mathematical research largely on his own time. His new
algebra, first described in the 1591 booklet In Artem Analyticem Isagoge, is a drastic
departure from the sixteenth-century norm. While many parts of the exposition cor-
respond more or less to similar parts of earlier books, others are unlike anything in
contemporary algebra. His unknowns possess dimension without limit, and he gives
two separate series of terms to describe them; he calls his unknowns “magnitudes”,
and the rules are presented without the usual connection with arithmetic; and because
he now uses letters for knowns, his expressions and equations look nothing like those
in earlier books. Adding to this the Greek neologisms whose meanings are not clearly
defined and the rhetoric against the old algebra “so spoiled and defiled by the barbar-
ians”,1 one is left wondering what this man was thinking.
The first step toward acquiring an understanding of Viète’s algebraic program must
be to identify what kinds of objects he was working with. For earlier algebraists this
is simple: the knowns and unknowns in algebra are numbers. More specifically, they
worked with whatever positive numbers can be obtained from the unit through addi-
tion, subtraction, multiplication, division, and root extraction (negative and complex
numbers were not yet part of the basic presentation of algebra). But Viète’s A cubus, B,
D quadratum, etc., which he calls “species”, possess dimension and so cannot be iden-
tified with numbers. On the other hand, the species can have arbitrarily high dimension,
so they cannot be identified with geometric magnitudes either, at least as they were
understood in his time. Fortunately Viète left us more than just his brief Isagoge. His
works on algebra, arithmetic, and geometry collected in the 1646 Opera Mathemat-
ica total 446 pages, and that book does not include his two treatises on trigonometry
published together in 1579, nor the astronomical manuscript he was working on at the
end of his life. Together these works give us plenty of material with which to hunt for
clues about his mathematical practice.
The path to deciphering Viète’s species cannot be direct, however. If we are to get
a sense of how his algebraic letters relate to numbers and geometric magnitudes, we
need to know just what numbers and magnitudes are in Viète’s thought. Section 3 of
this article investigates his works to answer this question. But even before addressing
the notions of number and magnitude it is necessary to look into the works of other
sixteenth-century mathematicians to identify differences between arithmetical and
geometric language, and to establish the meanings of the Latin words magnitudo and
numerus in Viète’s time. That is covered in Sect. 2. Only when these preliminaries are
1 “à barbaris defædata & conspurcata” (Viète 1591, fol. 2b.-7; 1646, p. xi.14). Translation from (Klein
1968, p. 318). Note: folio/page numbers are followed by line number, separated by a full stop. The first
reference in this footnote is in the seventh line from the bottom of folio 2b, and the second is in the 14th
line from the top of page xi.
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François Viète’s revolution in algebra 247
taken care of can we turn our attention to the nature of Viète’s algebraic knowns and
unknowns in Sect. 4.
Section 3 yields a couple surprises. On reading over Viète’s various treatises on
geometry we find two propositions showing equalities involving the fourth powers of
lines in a diagram. Viète’s theorems on angular sections, too, speak about geometric
magnitudes of higher dimension. These propositions exemplify Viète’s points 26 and
27 in Chapter VIII of Isagoge, where he speaks of “proportions above triplicate [. . .]
ratio”. Viète finds geometric magnitudes of dimension greater than three useful when
applied to numerical calculation in trigonometry, and in their native geometric setting
he is able to free them from their ratios by postulating in Chapter II that any proportion
a : b :: c : d can be resolved into the “equation” ad = bc, regardless of the
dimensions of the related magnitudes.
In another respect Viète’s magnitudes are in keeping with what we find in other
sixteenth-century books. Because there is no universal unit length, there is no natural
numerical measure for lines, planes, and bodies (and also higher-dimensional magni-
tudes). But geometric magnitudes are metrizable, so like other geometers of his time
Viète frequently assigns numerical values to them to illustrate their relative sizes. So
the sizes of magnitudes can be measured in two ways: they can be compared with
other magnitudes through their ratios, and they can be given numerical measures.
Viète’s numbers include integers, fractions, and irrational roots, but they are never
zero, negative, or complex. They conform to the numbers in common use in algebra
since at least the ninth century, and they coincide also with the numbers that can
measure continuous magnitudes. In fact Viète’s numbers, whether given in relation to
a diagram or not, are all regarded as being the measures of geometric objects. Even
in his one work on numerical root extraction the numbers belong to geometry. So
rather than operate in two independent realms of number and magnitude, Viète works
exclusively with geometric magnitudes.
So far the two critical points that have not been taken into consideration by historians
of mathematics are (a) that Viète worked with higher-dimensional magnitudes, and
(b) that his magnitudes can be measured in two ways: non-numerically via ratios, and
with numerical measures. Reading the Isagoge with these points in mind, a different
answer to the question of the nature of the species presents itself than we find in the
secondary literature. In Sect. 4 I suggest that the species are the relative “sizes” of
non-arithmetized geometric magnitudes. Viète has created an algebra for geometry,
where magnitudes can assume any positive dimension, equations can be formed by
resolving proportions, and coefficients possess the appropriate dimension so that all
terms in a polynomial equation are homogeneous. And because geometric magnitudes
are metrizable, numerical values can be assigned to the species. It is magnitudes
themselves, not the species that represent them, that possess this dual nature with
respect to measure. Viète calls his new algebra logistice speciosa, “logistic in species”,
to contrast it with the old numerical algebra, which he calls logistice numerosa. In his
view both are algebras for finding geometric magnitudes.
After further investigations into Viète’s species, Sect. 4 concludes with an anal-
ysis of algebraic problem-solving in logistice speciosa in the context of a particular
problem from his 1593 book Zeteticorum. Problems are posed in terms of geometry,
and the given magnitudes are named with consonants, like “B” and “D” if they are
123
248 J. A. Oaks
one-dimensional, “B planum” and “D planum” if they are two-dimensional, etc. The

unknown is named in terms of a vowel, usually with “A” or “E”, and an equation or
proportion is set up in terms of the species and simplified. If one wants the unknown
magnitude itself, the simplified version is read as instructions for its construction. If
it is a numerical measure that is desired, then numbers are assigned to the known
magnitudes and the equation or proportion is either solved directly or is first converted
into the corresponding equation in logistice numerosa.
Section 5 situates Viète’s logistice speciosa in different contexts. In Sect. 5.1
his higher-dimensional magnitudes are compared with other “impossible” or “false”
objects of the sixteenth century: irrational, negative, and complex numbers, and irra-
tional coefficients. Just as mathematicians of the time could not offer any plausible
way to conceive of complex numbers, Viète most likely had no geometric conception
of his higher-dimensional magnitudes. He simply found them to be useful in calcula-
tion. Specifically, it was astronomical calculation that interested him, and this interest
is described in Sect. 5.2. Recently only Swerdlow (1975) has emphasized Viète’s
ongoing preoccupation with astronomy and the underlying trigonometric orientation
of a large part of Viète’s mathematical output. Next, Sect. 5.3 considers the new alge-
bra from the broader perspective of mathematical problem-solving. Viète himself was
aware that with the creation of his logistice speciosa he had not only developed a useful
tool for calculation, but he had revolutionized both algebra and geometric analysis, as
Freguglia (1989) and Panza (2006) have described.
Sections 5.4–5.6 follow up Sect. 4.1 in analyzing Viète’s notation. Not only did
he work his problems with undetermined knowns represented by consonants, but his
notation operates in a fundamentally different way than any of the algebraic notations
that preceded it. This, too, has not been noted before by historians. In this case it is
not Viète’s notation that has been misunderstood, but the notations that were practiced
before him. For example, Michael Stifel’s “1A” (1544) contrasts with Viète’s “A”
in that for Stifel the letter A is a kind of number that requires the “1” to become a
value, where Viète’s “A” is itself a value (i.e., the non-arithmeticized “measure”) of an
unknown magnitude. This may seem like a minor distinction, but it lies at the core of
what differentiates premodern from modern algebra. Section 5.7 reviews the algebras
of Jean Borrel and Simon Stevin to show that despite their geometric leanings they did
not create an algebra of magnitudes, and Sect. 5.8 compares the algebraic programs
of al-Khayyām and Viète.
The only previous study of the ontology of the objects of Viète’s logistice speciosa
was published over eighty years ago. The German-trained philosopher Jacob Klein
outlined his thesis in the second part of his two-part article “Die griechische Logistik
und die Entstehung der Algebra” in 1936. Later, in 1968, the two parts were published
in English translation as the book Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of
Algebra. Klein argued that Viète’s letters are abstract entities that transcend numbers
and magnitudes. For him the letter signs “A”, “B”, etc. are symbolic formations that
can be interpreted either as magnitudes or numbers, but they derive their being through
the syntactic rules of Isagoge Chapter IIII. Klein regarded these rules as being “the
first modern axiom system”. I review Klein’s interpretation in Sect. 6, along with the
views of other historians before and after him.
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1.1 Viète’s works
In 1646 Frans van Schooten published Viète’s collected works in the single volume
Opera Mathematica. He did not include the two works on trigonometry published
in 1579, nor the late draft on astronomy. Van Schooten organized the treatises by
topic: first the four algebraic works, then the one treatise on numbers, followed by
geometric works, and last the three treatises on the calendar. The titles given below of
some books are slightly altered in the 1646 Opera Mathematica. I give the titles in the
original printings.
For each passage of Viète’s that I cite I give the reference to the original printing, and
if it appeared in the 1646 Opera Mathematica I give that reference as well. Where there
is some difference between the two I quote the original version. The only exception is
that I have not located any copy of the 1631 Ad Logisticem Speciosam, Notæ Priores,
so for that work I cite only the 1646 printing.
In Sect. 3.1 I examine the works on trigonometry. These were published in the same
volume in Paris by Ioannes (Jamet) Mettayer in 1579, though D. E. Smith notes that
“printing began in 1571” (Smith 1953 vol 2, p. 627):
Canon Mathematicus seu ad Triangula (1579)
Universalium Inspectionum ad Canonem Mathematicum (1579).
In the rest of Sect. 3 I examine Viète’s works on geometry and arithmetic. The titles
listed below are followed by the original date of publication and the page number in
the Opera Mathematica:
Effectionum Geometricarum Canonica Recensio (1593, p. 229)
Supplementum Geometriæ (1593, p. 240)
Pseudo-Mesolabum & Alia Quædam Adiuncta Capitula (consisting of the two
works Pseudo-Mesolabum and Adiuncta Quædam Capitula. 1595, pp. 258,
275)
Ad Angularium Sectionum Analyticen (1615, p. 287)
Ad Problema Quod omnibus Mathematicis totius orbis construendum propo-
suit Adrianus Romanus (1595, p. 305) (henceforth Ad Problema)
Apollonius Gallus (1600, p. 325)
Variorum de Rebus Mathematicis Responsorum, Liber VIII (1593, p. 347)
(henceforth Variorum)
Munimen Adversus Nova Cyclometrica (1594, p. 437)
De Numerosa Potestatum Ad Exegesim Resolutione (1600, p. 163).
The algebraic works are addressed in Sect. 4:
In Artem Analyticem Isagoge (1591, p. 1) (we abbreviate this as Isagoge)
Ad Logisticem Speciosam, Notæ Priores (1631,2 p. 13)
Zeteticorum (1593/1600,3 p. 42)
2 (Freguglia 2008a, p. 53) dates the composition to before 1593.

3 The first sixteen folios were printed in Tours in 1593, and the remainder in Paris in 1600. Folio 16 ends
in the middle of Zetetic IV.6 (Van Egmond 1985, p. 362).
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250 J. A. Oaks
De Æquationum Recognitione et Emendatione Tractatus Duo (consisting of

the two works De Recognitione Aequationum and De Æquationum Emen-
datione. 1615, pp. 82, 127).
And finally Viète’s astronomical manuscript Ad Harmonicon Coeleste Libri Quinque

Priores (1600-03) is brought up in Sect. 5.2.
1.2 Preliminary remarks
To distinguish between the equating of geometric magnitudes and the equating of

algebraic expressions (either in logistice numerosa or logistice speciosa), and only for
the purpose of this article, I call the former “equalities” and the latter “equations”.
J. Winfree Smith’s translation of Viète’s Isagoge is printed in (Klein 1968), and
T. Richard Witmer’s translations of several of Viète’s works are published in (Viète
1983). I have taken or adapted translations of many passages from these sources.
Translations without a reference are mine.
In Sect. 2 I examine the wording in sixteenth-century mathematics books by various
authors. I did not make any particular selection of texts to consult. Rather, I looked
into every book on geometry, arithmetic, algebra, and astronomy/trigonometry I could
locate. In all I went through over ninety books in Latin and European vernacular
languages printed between 1500 and 1590. Some of these are translations from Greek,
often with commentary, while others are original texts. Some are of theoretical interest,
while others are practical in nature. For quotations I tend to cite books by authors from
the humanistic tradition to which Viète belonged, such as the works of Commandino,
Ramus, and Gosselin.
2 Arithmetical and geometric language in the sixteenth century
To properly assess the way Viète worked with and understood geometric magnitudes
in Sect. 3 it is necessary to first review a couple aspects of the wording of arithmeti-
cal calculations and geometric constructions in the books of other sixteenth-century
mathematicians. One aspect concerns the occasional application of the arithmetical
language of multiplication in geometry. Translations and commentaries of Greek geo-
metric texts usually speak of the rectangle contained by two lines, but sometimes a
sixteenth-century author will write of the multiplication of the lines. The second aspect
concerns the ways aggregations and differences are expressed. In arithmetic and alge-
bra the Latin words plus (“more”) and minus (“less”) linked together the terms of
binomials, apotomes, and polynomials, but if these words were used for this purpose
in geometry before Viète they occur very rarely (I have not found them). Here the
difference in wording between geometry and arithmetic was not so much conceptual
as it was a matter of convention. Also, I examine definitions and uses of the Latin
words magnitudo and numerus in sixteenth-century mathematics to understand their
meanings in Viète’s time. This will help us analyze Viète’s presentation of logistice
speciosa in Sect. 4.
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2.1 Multiplication
Multiplication in arithmetic and algebra is an act. One performs the operation on two
quantities which yields a particular outcome. The two Latin verbs employed in the
sixteenth century for multiplication are multiplicare and ducere, and many writers use
the two more or less interchangeably. The etymologies of the words might suggest
that multiplicare is a word belonging to arithmetic and ducere to geometry, but there
does not seem to be any distinction in the way they were applied. Guillaume Gosselin,
for example, uses both words in his 1577 De Arte Magna. In arithmetic he writes “we
multiply (multiplicabimus) 5 by 6 making 30” and “multiplying (duc) 30 by 2 makes
60”.4 And in this next example he uses the two verbs one after the other in a single
passage in an algebraic context: “we multiply (multiplicemus) 1L by 20 P 1L, to get
20L P 1Q, [and] we multiply (ducamus) 2L by 20 M 2L, making 40L M 4Q”5 (in
modern notation, x ·(20+ x) → 20x + x 2 , and 2x ·(20−2x) → 40x −4x 2 ). Cardano,
Peucer, Xylander, Borrel, and others also use both verbs, and Tartaglia uses the Italian
versions of both in his 1560 La Sesta Parte del General Trattato de Numeri, et Misure
and in his translation of Euclid’s Elements.6
The Latin preposition for “by” in phrases of the form “multiply X by Y ” can be either
in or per. Again, many authors use both words, and in conjunction with both ducere
and multiplicare. Often the verb is omitted, and the operation is indicated only by the
preposition. Xylander does this many times in his scholia to Diophantus’s Arithmetica.
One example from the introduction is: “and 9 in 27 makes 243”.7 The preposition
in these formulations without the verb is almost always in, though sometimes it is
per. In one place in his Algebra Petrus Ramus writes: “Thus 8q per 4 make 32q”8
(8x 2 · 4 → 32x 2 ).
Translations and commentaries of Greek geometric texts are faithful to the Greek
formulations when they write of the rectangle “contained” (contentum or compre-
hensum) by two lines. Commandino writes in his translation of Pappus’s Collection,
for example, “the rectangle contained by AC, ED” (“rectangulo contento AC ED”)
(Pappus 1588, fol. 194b.17). The rectangle is not the result of any operation. Nam-
ing it in terms of two of its orthogonal sides is a way of characterizing an object
that already exists. Very often the preposition sub (“under”, in the sense of “being
subject to”) is used, as in this sample from Peletier’s Euclid: “Rectangulum com-
prehensum sub AB & BE” (Euclid 1557, p. 153.-10). Three-dimensional examples
are usually worded differently, but with the same idea of describing an object. An
example from Commandino’s Pappus is “the solid having [as its] base the square
4 “...multiplicabimus 5 in 6, fient 30” (Gosselin 1577, fol. 49b.1); “duc 30 in 2, fient 60” (Gosselin 1577,
fol. 70a.9).
5 “...multiplicemus 1L in 20 P 1L, existent 20L P 1Q, ducamus 2L in 20 M 2L, fient 40L M 4Q” (Gosselin
1577, fol. 76a.13).
6 For examples in Tartaglia, see (Tartaglia 1560, fol. 28a; Euclid 1543, fols. XCIIIb (labeled “XC”),
CXXIIb). Even Viète uses both words in his Isagoge.
7 “Ut 9 in 27 facit 243” (Diophantus 1575, p. 3.19).
8 “Sic 8q per 4 faciunt 32q” (Ramus 1560, fol. 3a).
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252 J. A. Oaks
of FD and altitude DE”.9 Squares and cubes were worded with the preposition ex
(“of”), like “quadratum quod ex cb” in Oronce Fine’s version of Euclid (Euclid 1551,
fol. 31a.34).
Sometimes the words for “rectangle” and “contained” are omitted, and the rectangle
is identified only by the preposition. In his translation of Apollonius’s Conics Memium
writes phrases like “sub CZ & ZH” for “[the rectangle contained] under CZ & ZH”
(Apollonius 1537, fol. 4b.-3), and François de Foix Candale writes in one place “sub
AB BC” before spelling it out in full a few lines later as “rectangulum sub tota AB &
minori segmento CB” (Euclid 1566, fols. 58b.3, 58b.10). So where the preposition in
indicates the operation of multiplication, sub indicates the geometric object “under”
the stated magnitudes.
Many books give geometric propositions that ultimately serve the needs of arith-
metical computation, and in some of these books the language of arithmetic crosses
over to geometry. This is the case in Cardano’s Ars Magna, whose propositions
form the groundwork that leads to solutions of cubic equations. Cardano uses the
preposition in to indicate the multiplication of lines and squares, as in this exam-
ple: “the cube of AB is equal to the cubes of AG & GB, & the triple of AG in
the square of GB, & the triple of GB in the square of AG”,10 or in modern nota-
tion, AB 3 = AG 3 + G B 3 + 3AG · G B 2 + 3G B · AG 2 . And Tartaglia, another
algebraist, explicitly equates the multiplication of lines, using both ducere and molti-
plicare, with rectangle formation in his translation of Euclid’s Elements (Euclid
1543, fol. XXIXa). This kind of crossover is a continuation of the medieval tra-
dition in calculation, where lines in geometric diagrams were multiplied either to
justify the solutions to equations, or to solve geometry problems by algebra or arith-
metic.
The multiplication of lines also occurs in trigonometry, where geometric propo-
sitions provide the theoretical foundation for the calculation of tables. “Ptolemy’s
Theorem” from Book I of the Almagest is a good example. It states that for quadri-
lateral ABGD inscribed in a circle, the rectangle under the diagonals AG and BD
is equal to the rectangles under AB, GD and AG, BD. Ptolemy states the propo-
sition with geometric language, but translations published in the sixteenth century
usually reword it in terms of multiplication. Editions of the translations by George of
Trebozond (1528) and Regiomontanus (1550) both use the preposition in. Regiomon-
tanus writes: “Thus what is made from BD in AG is equal to those made from AD
in BG and AB in DG”.11 Gerard of Cremona’s Latin translation from Arabic, first
printed in Venice in 1515, phrases it with ducere: “thus the whole product (ductus) of
AG in BD is equal to the products (ductui) of AB in GD & AD in BG together.”12
9 “...solidum basim habens quadratum ex FD, & altitudinem DE” (Pappus 1588, fol. 282a.4).
10 “...cubum AB, æqualem esse cubis AG & GB & triplo AG in quadratum GB, & triplo GB in quadratum
AG” (Cardano 1545, fol 16b.7).
11 “Ergo quod fit ex b,d in a,g æquale est his quæ fiunt ex a,d in b,g & ex a,b in d,g” (Ptolemy 1550, fol.
Biiijb.22). George’s translation: “Erit ergo totium etiam quadrangulum quod est ex .A.G. In .B.D. æquale
utrisque que sunt: ex .A.B. In .D.G. & ex .A.D. In .B.G.” (Ptolemy 1528, fol. 5a.-14).
12 “...ergo totus ductus .a.g. in .b.d. est equalis ductui .a.b. in .g.d. & .a.d. in .b.g. simul.” (Ptolemy 1515,
fol. 5b.-2).
123
Copernicus is one who preserves Ptolemy’s geometric language: “quod sub BD &
AC æquale est eis, quæ sub AD, BC, & sub AB, CD.” (Copernicus 1543, fol. 13r.-
6).
Ptolemy uses this theorem to prove two related results that he applies in making
calculations for his table of chords. The first is “if two arcs and the corresponding
chords are given, the chord of the difference between the two arcs will also be given”,
and the second is the version for the chord of the sum of the two arcs (Ptolemy 1998,
pp. 51.13, 53.9). These propositions, reworked in terms of the ratios of the sides of
triangles, would become Viète’s first two theorems on angular sections (discussed in
Sect. 3.5).
2.2 The Latin plus and minus
The second aspect of wording in sixteenth-century mathematics concerns the different

ways aggregations and differences were expressed. Francesco Maurolico explains the
Latin terms plus and minus in the context of quadratic irrational numbers in his 1575
Arithmeticorum Libri Duo:
When the names of the quantity13 are mutually incommensurable, then the gath-
ering cannot be made other than by assembling the parts with the adverb Plus,
nor likewise can a difference be produced other than with the adverb Minus, as
Euclid showed in the tenth [book] for both binomials and apotomes.14
Maurolico had introduced
√ the terms
√ plus and minus a few pages back with an example
in notation using 3 (“r. 3.”) and 2 (“r. 2.”), and the abbreviations “p◦ ” and “m̃” for
plus and minus:
When two quantities r. 3. & r. 2. are joined together, I will immediately say that
their aggregation is r. 3. p◦ r. 2. But if it is subtracted, straightaway I will respond
that the remainder from the subtraction is r. 3. m̃ r. 2.15
It is important to note that “r. 3. m̃ r. 2” expresses the remainder from the subtraction
and not the operation of subtraction itself. Likewise “r. 3. p◦ r. 2” is the result of adding
together r. 3. and r. 2. In Maurolico and other sixteenth-century mathematicians the
Latin words plus and minus take meanings close to “more” and “less”, and are not
operations like the English “plus” and “minus”.
In elementary arithmetic there was no need to express numbers with plus or minus,
since the operations of addition and subtraction can be performed. No one would write
the result of subtracting two from fifteen as “fifteen minus two”. In arithmetic the words
√
13 In a quantity like 2 + 3 the ‘names’ or ‘terms’ are the 2 and the 3.
√
14 “Quando nomina quantitatum sunt ad invicem incommensurabilia: tunc congregatio haud aliter fieri
potest, quàm aggregatis membris per adverbium Plus: nec etiam differentia aliter proferri, quàm per adver-
bium Minus: sicut ostendit Euclides in decimo, tam de binomijs, quàm de residuis.” (Maurolico 1575, p.
101.7). I italicize plus and minus because I am not translating them from Latin.
15 “ut si iungendæ sint duæ quantitates r. 3. & r. 2. statim dicá, earum aggregatum esse r. 3. p◦ r. 2. Si vero
hæc ab illa subtrahenda fit, ilicet respondebo, residuum post subtractionem esse r. 3. m̃. r. 2.” (Maurolico
1575, p. 94.10).
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254 J. A. Oaks
plus and minus were useful mainly for writing binomials, apotomes, and polynomials,
where numbers and expressions cannot be expressed with a single “name”.
Several authors explain how plus and minus are applied in algebra to express the
sums and differences of terms of different species, or power. Jean Borrel writes after
explaining how to add and subtract terms of the same species:
If, however, different species are to be added to one another or subtracted, which
happens frequently in this teaching, then use these two words plus & minus,
which are denoted by their first letters in this way: P & M.16
One example from Borrel’s book is the polynomial (Borrel 1559,

p. 136.14), which corresponds to our 6x − 4x 2 + 8x 3 . As in the case of binomials and
apotomes, the “P” and “M” do not represent operations the way our “+” and “−” do.
Borrel’s polynomial is a collection or aggregation of fourteen objects of two kinds,
diminished by four objects of a third kind. Because sixteenth-century algebra was
mainly expressed in notation, the words plus and minus are almost always abbreviated.
Cardano, Borrel, Peletier, and Gosselin abbreviated them with “P” and “M”, while
Scheubel, Ramus, and Xylander use “+” and “−”. Of course these latter signs do not
carry their modern meanings either.
I have not found the words plus or minus in geometry before Viète to express the
aggregation or difference of magnitudes. Other forms were used instead. For aggrega-
tion the magnitudes are usually just written one after the other, but we often find cum
(“with”) or the sign “&”. Instead of minus, Greek and Latin geometers spoke of the
“excess” of one magnitude over another. In one place Commandino writes the differ-
ence of two lines as “the excess [of] AC [over] DE”.17 There was likely no conceptual
obstacle to geometers in adopting plus and minus. If Commandino did not write “CA
minus DE” it may be that he was simply trying to match the Greek wording.
2.3 The meanings of the terms magnitudo and numerus
The Latin words magnitudo (“magnitude”) and numerus (“number”) appear frequently
in Viète’s works, so it will be helpful for the analysis in Sect. 4.2 to briefly review
their meanings in sixteenth-century European mathematics. Magnitudo is the usual
translation of the Greek term mégethos.18 The Latin word was consistently understood
by sixteenth-century mathematicians as referring to the three geometric genera of line,
surface, and body. The Swiss humanist Conrad Dasypodius characterizes magnitudo
nicely in his 1573 ΛEΞ IKON seu Dictionarium Mathematicum. He begins the parts
on arithmetic and geometry by saying that the first treats numbers, and the second
16 “Si verò diversæ species addendæ sint inter se, vel subtrahendæ, quod accidit in hoc magisterio frequenter,
tunc utimur duabis istis dictionibus, plus, & minus, quæ primoribus suis literis notantur, sic P, & M.” (Borrel
1559, p. 124.5).
17 “excessu AC DE” (Pappus 1588, fol. 180a.-2).
18 The Greek word was also sometimes translated more generally as quantitas. I am concerned specifically
with the Latin magnitudo.
123
magnitudes.19 The word magnitudo is then defined as “that which can increase and
grow, and can be cut and divided indefinitely. There are three species: line, surface,
body”.20 Other mathematicians of his century apply the word with this same mean-
ing in mind. They characterize magnitudes as the continuous geometric objects of
dimension 1, 2, and 3 by contrasting magnitudo with discrete numerus, by explicitly
associating magnitudo with geometry and sometimes specifically with “linea, super-
ficies, & corpus”,21 and by identifying “point” as the principle of magnitude.22 The
other objects that Aristotle classified as quantities (number, time, place, and language)
and also angles are excluded. No book I consulted extends the meaning of magnitudo
to include anything more than the three genera listed by Dasypodius, even if several
of these authors note that the propositions in Euclid’s Book V apply to more than just
geometric magnitudes.23 There may be some sixteenth-century book I missed that
espouses a broader view of the term magnitudo, but even if one eventually surfaces
it will not change the fact that the commonly understood meaning of the term refers
specifically to objects of the three geometric dimensions.
When numerus is opposed to magnitudo in discussions on the classification of
“quantity” it refers to the discrete numbers of Aristotle and Euclid. The unit is indi-
visible and a “number” is defined as a collection of units, so numbers consist only
of positive integers. This notion of number is distinct from the numbers of medieval
and early modern algebraists, which include fractions and irrational roots, and which
had no place in Aristotle’s scheme. These are called by the same word, numerus, and
which meaning is intended is usually clear by the context.24 To distinguish between
the two kinds of number I use the phrase “discrete number” for those in Euclid and
“continuous number” for those of the algebraists. Viète, as we shall see, does not work
with discrete numbers at all, but only with continuous numbers as the measures of
magnitudes.
19 “Arithmetica est scientia, quæ uim & naturam numerorum tradit”, “Geometria est scientia magni-
tudinum” (Dasypodius 1573, fols. 1a, 7a).
20 “Magnitudo est quæ crescit & augetur, atque secatur, dividique potest in infinitum usque. sunt autem
tres species, linea, superficies, corpus” (Dasypodius 1573, fol. 22a.2).
21 As Clavius does in (Euclid 1574, p. 14 of the Prolegomena).
22 Some sixteenth-century mathematicians who apply the word magnitudo in these ways include Gregor
Reisch, Johann Scheubel, Oronce Fine, Jacques Peletier, Pedro Monzón, François de Foix Candale, Petrus
Ramus, Federico Commandino, Christoph Clavius, and Guillaume Gosselin (Reisch 1504, 2nd page of
Book VI; Euclid 1550, p. 226.16; 1551, fol. 1a; 1557, p. 2; 1566, fol. 39a; 1572, fols. 1a, 6b, 57b, 124a;
1574, pp. 2, 14 of the Prolegomena; Monzón 1559, fols. 39a, 40a; Ramus 1569, pp. 2–3 of Geometriae;
Gosselin 1577, fol. 1aff).
23 Reisch and Commandino are two examples. See (Crapulli 1969, chapter I). Barocius’s 1560 translation of
Proclus’s commentary on Book I of the Elements also restricts magnitudo to the three geometric dimensions
(Proclus 1560, pp. 3, 21.4, 33.19, 34.4, 69.26), and in his investigation of the nature of angles he explains
that they are not magnitudes (Proclus 1560, pp. 69ff).
24 Following the uses of arithmos in Diophantus, Xylander and Viète use the word numerus with still
another meaning as the name the first-degree unknown in logistice numerosa. There, too, the meaning is
clear by the context. See Sect. 4.1.
123
256 J. A. Oaks
3 Magnitudes and numbers in Viète
3.1 Viète’s arithmetical language in Universalium Inspectionum
We are now in a position to inspect the wording of propositions in Viète’s Univer-

salium Inspectionum ad Canonem Mathematicum (Viète 1579b). This book provides
the geometric foundations for the trigonometric tables in the companion work Canon
Mathematicus seu ad Triangula. Chapter XV, “Parascevæ ad sectiones obliquangu-
lorum” (pp. 24–31), provides core results for plane geometry. True to the norm of
contemporary geometry, the propositions are stated and proven without recourse to
numbers. But instead of writing of rectangles “under” (sub) two sides, Viète indicates
multiplication with the preposition in. Also, he borrows the words plus and minus
from arithmetic and algebra to indicate the gathering and difference of magnitudes.
The best examples are on page 24, where he states and proves his version of the law
of cosines. For triangle ABD, with base BD and altitude AC (C may or may not lie
between B and D), he states the proposition “AD potest AB & BD, minùs BD in CB
bis”, which we would write as AD 2 = AB 2 + B D 2 − 2B D · C B (Viète 1579b, p. 24).
Later, the word plus appears in an alternate form of the statement: “AB potest AD,
minùs BD, plùs BD in CB bis”, which is equivalent to AB 2 = AD 2 −B D 2 +2BC ·B D.
Here is his proof to the rule for the case that C lies between B and D, showing the
repeated use of “in” for multiplication (The italics are Viète’s):
Aπ óδιξ ις
Dum perpendiculum cadit intra Triangulum, BD in CB bis, æquale est CB bis
in se,& CD bis in CB, sicuti 7 in 4 æquale est 4 in 4, & 3 in 4. At AD potest AC
& CD. AB verò potest AC & CB. BD item potest CB & CD, & CD in CB bis.
Auferatur igitur potentia AC & CD à potentiis AB & BD, remanebit CB bis in
se, & CD in CB bis.
Other passages in the book show more explicitly that Viète was thinking of his
magnitudes in terms of arithmetical calculation. He writes of “numerus CB” and
“numerus AC” on pages 6 and 7, and on page 4 he writes “AB minùs unitate” for
AB − 1, and “AC plùs unitate” for AC + 1. And on many pages numerical values
are assigned to magnitudes to illustrate different calculations. This way of treating
magnitudes in a computational way is consistent with the other numerically oriented
calculations we saw in Cardano and Regiomontanus. The only novelty is Viète’s
adoption of the arithmetical words plus and minus.
3.2 Viète post-1590: a return to geometric language
A dozen years passed between the publication of Viète’s two works on trigonometry
and his later mathematical works. In these later books Viète abandons the multiplica-
tion of magnitudes, writing instead of the rectangles, squares, and solids determined
by lines and planes using the prepositions sub and ex. However, he retains the words
plus and minus. Proposition XIX of Supplementum Geometriæ (1593), whose diagram
appears in Fig. 1, provides a good example. At one point in the calculations he writes
123
Fig. 1 The diagram from

Proposition XIX in
Supplementum Geometriæ
(Viète 1593d, fol. 19a)
“the cube ex IA plus the solid sub AB & the square ex IA minus double the solid sub IA
& the square ex AB equal the cube ex AB”25 (I A3 + AB · I A2 − 2I A · AB 2 = AB 3 ).
3.3 Four-dimensional magnitudes and the “supreme stipulation”
Apart from the presence of plus and minus, all of the geometric propositions in Viète’s
books conform to the language and structure of other Latin geometry books of the six-
teenth century. No metric is assumed in the course of the proofs, and the magnitudes are
expressed without operations. But Viète diverges from the norm of Greek/Latin geome-
try in a major way in Propositions XIIII and XV in Effectionum Geometricarum (1593)
by stating equalities with four-dimensional geometric magnitudes (Viète 1593b, fols.
4b-5b; Viète 1646, pp. 234–236). In Proposition XIIII he begins with right triangle
ABC with right angle at C. Because he invokes the mean proportional between the
hypotenuse and the altitude, he shows a second diagram in which AB and BC are
laid flat on a line that becomes the diameter of a semi-circle, giving the proportion
AB : B D :: B D : BC (see Fig. 2). From this he deduces AB 2 : B D 2 :: B D 2 : BC 2 ,
and substituting AC 2 + BC 2 for AB 2 he gets (AC 2 + BC 2 ) : B D 2 :: B D 2 : BC 2 . So
far this is all in agreement with traditional geometry. He then converts the proportion
into an equality, first in logistice speciosa, and then again in terms of the magnitudes
shown in the diagram, which gives BC 4 + BC 2 · AC 2 = B D 4 .
The “Quadrato-quadrato ex BD” in the last line of Fig. 2, for example, is the square
of the square of line BD shown in the semicircle. Similarly, the “planoplano sub
Quadrato ex AC & Quadrato ex BC” is the four-dimensional magnitude “under” the
squares of AC and BC. The geometric language of his equalities here and in Proposition
XV shows that Viète was thinking of these objects as magnitudes, and not as numbers.
Viète gives no explanation in these propositions for his four-dimensional magni-
tudes. He obtained them through the resolution of a proportion, and this move is an
application of one of his sixteen “stipulations” (symbola) comprising Chapter II of
25 “...cubus ex IA plus solido sub AB & quadrato ex IA minùs solido duplo sub IA & quadrato ex AB
æquatur cubo ex AB.” (Viète 1593d, fol. 19a.-1; 1646, p. 252.45).
123
258 J. A. Oaks
Fig. 2 Part of Proposition XIIII of Effectionum Geometricarum (Viète 1593b, fol. 5a)
Isagoge. These stipulations cover equations and proportions for Viète’s new algebra,
and are modeled on Euclid’s “common notions” (Viète 1591, fol. 4a; 1646, p. 2; Euclid
1956 vol 1, p. 155):
But the supreme stipulation of equations and proportions and which is all-
important in analysis is:
15 If there be three or four magnitudes and the result of the multiplication of
the extreme terms is equal to the result of the multiplication of the mean by itself
or to the product of the means, then those magnitudes are proportional. And
conversely,
16 If there be three or four magnitudes, and the first is to the second, so that
second, or else some third, is to another, the product of the extremes will be
equal to the product of the means.
And so, a proportion can be called the composition (constitutio) of an equation,
an equation the resolution (resolutio) of a proportion.26
In modern notation these rules assert the equivalence of the proportion a : b :: c : d
and the equality ad = bc, where b may or may not equal c, and with no stated restriction
on dimension. It is a generalization of Euclid’s Elements Propositions VI.16, where
the parameters are lines, and XI.34, where two are lines and two planes.
26 Translation adapted from (Klein 1968, p. 324).
123
3.4 Greek computational geometry
But if Viète’s “Quadrato-quadrato ex BD” cannot be drawn in the diagram, the same
can also be said of many two- and three-dimensional geometric magnitudes in Greek
geometry. The enunciation of Euclid’s Proposition VI.16 reads:
If four straight lines be proportional, the rectangle contained by the extremes is
equal to the rectangle contained by the means; and, if the rectangle contained by
the extremes be equal to the rectangle contained by the means, the four straight
lines will be proportional (Euclid 1956 vol 2, p. 221).
Here “the rectangle contained by the means” in most cases will not be a particular
rectangle given in position because the two lines determining it are not attached at
one endpoint at a right angle. In fact, the sides determining rectangles cited in Greek
works rarely satisfy Euclid’s definition at the beginning of Book II: “Any rectangular
parallelogram is said to be contained by the two straight lines containing the right
angle”. Already in Proposition II.1 Euclid writes about “the rectangle contained by
A, BC” when the two lines may not be anywhere near each other. And the lines
determining the rectangles cited in Proposition II.2 are absolutely not at right angles,
since they are colinear. Propositions VI.16 and XI.34, like many propositions in Greek
mathematics, are about the measures or sizes of geometric objects. “The rectangle
contained by the means” does not designate a particular rectangle given in position,
but only the size of a rectangle whose sides are equal (we would say “congruent”) to
those lines. Location and orientation of this rectangle relative to the other magnitudes
in the diagram are undetermined and irrelevant to the argument. It is only the relative
“measure” that is intended.
This computational aspect of Euclidean geometry is manifest in the equalities in
the works of several Greek authors. Apollonius, for example, can write in Proposition
III.27 that the sum of two rectangles and two squares is equal to twice another square
when neither rectangle can exist in position. In Commandino’s translation this is
written “rectangula bxd, bld, & quadrata xe, le æqualia sunt duplo quadrati be.”27
Viète, too, engages in this kind of computational geometry throughout his works,
including the two examples quoted above from Supplementum Geometriæ and Effec-
tionum Geometricarum. In the former, for example, “double the solid under IA & the
square of AB” cannot have a representation in the diagram since A, B, and I are col-
inear. But even if geometers had always manipulated expressions that could not exist
in position, until Viète they nevertheless always ensured that their geometric compu-
tations remained in one, two, or three dimensions. Viète allowed himself to break this
rule by postulating that any proportion can be resolved into an equality. Even if the
individual fourth-degree terms have no possible perceptible existence, he worked with
them anyway.
27 (Apollonius 1566, fol. 86b.13). Points b, d, l, and x are colinear. I wrote the letters from the diagram
in italics to distinguish them from the surrounding text. Taliafero translates Apollonius’s Greek using the
symbols “+” and “=”: “rect. B X , X D + rect. B L, L D + sq. X E + sq. L E = 2 sq. B E”, and Heiberg’s
version is even more algebraic: “BΞ × Ξ Δ + BΛ × ΛΔ + Ξ E 2 + ΛE 2 = 2B E 2 ” (Apollonius 2000, p.
221; 1891, p. 381.18).
123
260 J. A. Oaks
3.5 Angular sections and numerical calculation
Four-dimensional magnitudes are the highest one can get by resolving proportions in
plane geometry. But in his investigations into the geometry of angular sections, i.e.,
the trigonometry of multiple angles, Viète found himself deriving proportions with
magnitudes of arbitrarily high dimension. His main theorem relates the sides of a
triangle having acute angle θ with the sides of another triangle having acute angle nθ
(n = 2, 3, 4, . . .). He presented this and related theorems in two books published in
his lifetime: Chapter 10 in Variorum (1593) and Chapter 9 in Ad Problema (1595).28
He also gave constructions for the triangles in the chapter “Genesis Triangulorum”
in Ad Logisticen Speciosam, Notæ Priores (written before 1593, published in 1631)
(Viète 1646, p. 33). After Viète’s death Alexander Anderson added proofs and related
theorems to Viète’s theorems and published them in 1615 in Ad Angularium Sectionum
Analyticen.
Viète’s main theorem on angular sections is a natural extension of a well-known
proposition in trigonometry. That proposition is given as Theorem II in Ad Problema
and Ad Angularium Sectionum Analyticen,29 and is equivalent to our rules
cos(a + b) = cos(a) cos(b) − sin(a) sin(b)

sin(a + b) = sin(a) cos(b) + cos(a) sin(b).
These rules had been known in one form or another since antiquity. We saw at the
end of Sect. 2.1 that Ptolemy had proven equivalent rules in his Almagest in terms of
chords of an arc, which he used to construct his table of chords (Ptolemy 1998, pp.
51ff). Repeated applications of these formulas for angles θ + θ , 2θ + θ , 3θ + θ , etc.,
result in higher powers of our trigonometric functions. The identities for angle 4θ , for
example, are
cos(4θ ) = cos4 (θ ) − 6 cos2 (θ ) sin2 (θ ) + sin4 (θ )

sin(4θ ) = 4 cos3 (θ ) sin(θ ) − 4 cos(θ ) sin3 (θ ).
Viète’s main theorem is Theorem III in Ad Problema and Ad Angularium Sectionum

Analyticen, and Theorem I in Variorum. It expresses these trigonometric rules as
proportions of ratios of the sides of right triangles. In all books he first states the rules
verbally, then in terms of logistice speciosa, and last he shows a numerical example.
In logistice speciosa he calls the hypotenuse of the single-angle triangle Z , the base
D, and height B. If we call the base of the triangle with angle nθ Dn , its altitude Bn ,
and its hypotenuse Z n , then his proportions can be written as
D2 : Z 2 :: D 2 − B 2 : Z 2
B2 : Z 2 :: 2D B : Z 2
28 (Viète 1593a, fol. 15a; 1595a, fol. 8; 1646, pp. 314ff, 371ff).
29 (Viète 1595a, fol 8r; 1615a, p. 10; 1646, pp. 288, 315). Theorem I is equivalent to the related identities
for cos(a − b) and sin(a − b).
123
Fig. 3 Reconstructed diagram

for the theorem on angular
sections
D3 : Z 3 :: D 3 − 3D B 2 : Z 3
B3 : Z 3 :: 3D 2 B − B 3 : Z 3
D4 : Z 4 :: D 4 − 6D 2 B 2 + B 4 : Z 4
B4 : Z 4 :: 4D 3 B − 4D B 3 : Z 4
D5 : Z 5 :: D 5 − 10D 3 B 2 + 5D B 4 : Z 5
B5 : Z 5 :: 5D 4 B − 10D 2 B 3 + B 5 : Z 5 .
The proportions for D4 and Z 4 are easily seen to be equivalent to the trigonometric
formulas shown above.
This theorem requires no proof because it is an easy corollary to Theorem II, so
no diagram accompanies it in any of the three books. But Viète provides diagrams for
numerical calculations in Corollaries I and II in Ad Problema (which are Theorems
II and III in Variorum). Based on these I give my own diagram in Fig. 3 showing
the single, double, and triple angle triangles inscribed in a semicircle. In the diagram
Z = Z n , but this is not required in the theorems.
Here is how Viète states the theorem for the base of the quadruple angle triangle in
all three books:
In ratione quadruplâ, Hypotenusa secundi [Z 4 ] fit similis Quadrato-quadrato-
Hypotenusæ primi [Z 4 ]. Basis [D4 ], Quadrato-quadrato basis primi, minùs
plano-plano sexies sub quadrato perpendiculi primi & quadrato basis eiusdem,
plus quadrato-quadrato perpendiculi [D 4 − 6B 2 D 2 + B 4 ].30
Again the language is that of geometry, not of arithmetic or of Viète’s species. The
“hypotenusa” and “basis” are literally the hypotenuse and base of a triangle, not their
representations in terms of any algebra, and the term “plano-plano” designates a four-
dimensional geometric magnitude just as it did in the example from Effectionum
Geometricarum given in Sect. 3.3.
Viète’s numerical example begins √ with a right triangle with base 10 and perpendic-
ular 1 (which makes the hypotenuse 101), from which he finds the (relative) bases
30 (Viète 1593a, fol. 15b; 1595a, fol. 9a; 1615a, p. 12; 1646, pp. 289, 316, 372). In all three books there are
errors in the statements for the quintuple angle triangle, but the formulations in terms of logistice speciosa
and in numbers are correct.
123
262 J. A. Oaks
(a) (b)
Fig. 4 Numerical calculations with angular sections. a Calculated values. b Diagram from (Viète 1595a,
fol. 11b)
and perpendiculars for the double, triple, quadruple, and quintuple angle triangles. For
the quadruple angle triangle he finds the base to be 9401 and the perpendicular to be
3960 (with hypotenuse 10,201). Viète’s higher-dimensional magnitudes may have no
perceptible existence, but the rules in which they appear give the correct values for
the sides of triangles when converted to numbers.
More calculations follow. In some, like Theorems IV and V in Ad Problema, numeri-
cal equations (in Viète’s logistice numerosa) are formed by manipulating and resolving
the proportions. Others, like Corollary I in the same book, give further numerical exam-
ples. Assuming the radius AC of a circle is “100 000 | 000 000 000” and the base BD
of the single-angle triangle is “196 000 |” (which is close to the value if the angle is
an eight of a right angle), he calculates the next six bases (see Fig. 4).31 These calcu-
lations are obtained from equations in species that involve geometric magnitudes up
to dimension seven.
Because Viète shows no diagram for his main theorem, he does not work with
higher-dimensional magnitudes with reference to specific lines. Alexander Anderson
happens to give proofs for propositions that do not require dimensions greater than 2.
But he does show a diagram in the problem (zeteticum) following Theorem IIII, where
he works with magnitudes up to dimension five. In Fig. 5 are images of one of several
expressions that involve five-dimensional magnitudes divided by four-dimensional
magnitudes. The first image is from the 1615 printing, and the second is from the
1646 Opera Mathematica. This is followed by a modern version and the diagram from
1615 to which they refer.32
31 (Viète 1595a, fol. 11b; 1646, p. 319). The vertical bar can be read as a kind of decimal place.
The numbers are written as in (1595). In the 1646 printing they are written as “100,000,000,000,000”
and “196,000,000,000,000”, and the numbers in Fig. 4 are shown as “184,160,000,000,000”,
“164,953,600,000,000”, “139,159,056,000,000”, “107,778,549,760,000”, “72,096,901,529,600”, and
“33,531,337,238,016”.
32 Anderson modified Viète’s language by invoking the explicit multiplication and division of magnitudes
using the preposition in and the division bar, both borrowed from logistice speciosa. He also multiplies
magnitudes in his appendix of De Æquationum Emendatione.
123
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Fig. 5 One of Alexander Anderson’s examples of a five-dimensional magnitude divided by a four-
dimensional magnitude. a (Viète 1615a, p. 20), b (Viète 1646, p. 292), c modern notation, d (Viète 1615a,
p. 17)
3.6 The usefulness of higher-dimensional magnitudes
We can now interpret Viète’s remarks on higher-dimensional magnitudes in Chapter

VIII of Isagoge:33
26 Since all magnitudes are either lines or surfaces or solids, of what earthly
use are proportions above triplicate (triplicatam) or, at most, quadruplicate (qua-
druplicatam) ratio except, perhaps, in sectioning angles, so that we may derive
the angles of figures from their sides or the sides from their angles?
27 Hence the mystery of angular sections, perceived by no one up to the present
either arithmetically or geometrically, is now clear, and shows
How to find the ratio of the sides, given the ratio of the angles;34
How to construct one angle [in the same ratio] to another as one number is to
another.35
33 “26 Ecquis verò, cum magnitudines omnes sint lineæ, superficies, vel corpora, tantus proportionum
suprà triplicatam, aut demum quadruplicatam rationem potest esse usus in rebus humanis, nisi fortè in
sectionibus angulorum, ut ex lateribus figurarum anguli, vel ex angulis latera consequamur? | 27 Ergo à
nemine hactenus adgnitum mysterium angularium sectionum, sive ad Arithmetica, sive Geometrica aperit,
& edocet | Data ratione angulorum dare rationem laterum. | Facere ut numerum ad numerum, ita angulum
ad angulum.” (Viète 1591, fol. 9a; 1646, p. 12). Translation adapted from (Viète 1983, p. 32).
34 Anderson clarifies this in Problem I in Ad Angularium Sectionum Analyticen. Given two angles that
have to one another the ratio of an integer to an integer, to find the sides either by construction or by
numerical calculation. This follows from the main theorem (Viète 1615a, p. 40; 1646, p. 300).
35 Anderson clarifies this in Problem II in Ad Angularium Sectionum Analyticen (Viète 1615a, p. 40;
1646, p. 300). The ratio is of an integer to an integer, and it asserts effectively that one can divide
123
264 J. A. Oaks
We should first explain the connection of higher-dimensional magnitudes with

triplicate, quadruplicate, etc. ratio. The terms “triplicate” and “quadruplicate” come
from continued proportion. Euclid defines “duplicate ratio” and “triplicate ratio” in
Elements Book V, Definitions 9 and 10. Heath translates the latter as:
10. When four magnitudes are <continuously> proportional, the first is said to
have to the fourth the triplicate ratio of that which it has to the second, and so
on continually, whatever be the proportion. (Euclid 1956, vol 2, p. 114)
If the four magnitudes a, b, c, and d are in continued proportion, then the ratio a : d
is said to be the triplicate ratio of a : b, since it is obtained from compounding the
three ratios a : b, b : c, and c : d. Duplicate, quadruplicate, quintuplicate, etc. ratios
are defined similarly.
Euclid’s “duplicate” and “triplicate” are translated in the editions of Clavius,
Peletier, Scheubel, Tartaglia, and Pacioli as duplicatam and triplicatam, and in Chapter
XI of De Æquationum Emendatione Viète writes about terms in continued proportion
citing single, duplicate (duplicata), triplicate (triplicata), up to quintuplicate ratio
(ratione quintuplicata) (Viète 1615b, pp. 124–125; 1646, p. 156). Continued propor-
tions are also covered in Chapter XVII of De Recognitione Aequationum Tractatus
and in the first five propositions of Ad Logisticen Speciosam Notæ Priores (Viète
1615b, pp. 48ff; Viète 1646, pp. 13ff, 108ff). In all these instances two-dimensional
magnitudes are present in duplicate ratio, three-dimensional magnitudes in triplicate
ratio, four-dimensional magnitudes in quadruplicate ratio, etc. In Proposition V of
the latter work, for example, Viète shows how to find four continued proportionals
between two sides A and B so they will be in quintuplicate ratio. He does this by
first finding the four proportionals between their fifth powers, A5 , A4 B, A3 B 2 , A2 B 3 ,
AB 4 , B 5 , then taking the fifth roots of each term (Viète 1646, p. 15).
Magnitudes up to four dimensions are sometimes encountered in the course of
resolving proportions in plane geometry, as we saw in Sect. 3.3 in the example from
Effectionum Geometricarum. This is what Viète refers to when he says “or, at most,
quadruplicate ratio”. Higher-dimensional magnitudes arise in “sectioning angles”, and
in fact that is just where we find them: in Viète’s rhetorical statements of the theorems
and in notation in Anderson’s problem in Ad Angularium Sectionum Analyticen.
Note the wording in Viète’s exclamation from 1591: “of what earthly use are propor-
tions above triplicate [. . .]” (“tantus proportionum suprà triplicatam [. . .] potest esse
usus in rebus humanis”). He does not remark on the existence of higher-dimensional
magnitudes, but of what use or utility (usus) they could be. The use he has found is that
these trigonometric identities can be applied in numerical calculation “to find the ratio
of the sides, given the ratio of the angles”. Viète performs these numerical calculations
Footnote 35 continued
a given angle into n equal parts. This is equivalent to constructing the perpendicular of the smaller angle
triangle [given in Theorem V of Ad Problema (Viète 1595a, fol. 10b; 1646, p. 318)], which amounts to
constructing the solution to an nth degree polynomial equation. Viète poses the problems of dividing an
angle into 3, 5, and 7 parts in his Theorematia I, II, and III in Ad Problema, which he solves by numerically
calculating the perpendiculars (Viète 1595a, fol. 12aff; 1646, pp. 320ff). Anderson repeats these problems
in Ad Angularium Sectionum Analyticen, giving instead geometric constructions (Viète 1615a, pp. 42ff;
1646, pp. 301ff).
123
in both Variorum and Ad Problema, and Anderson repeats them in Ad Angularium

Sectionum Analyticen. Always with an eye on numerical calculation, Viète derived his
rules without concern for the geometric meanings of higher-dimensional magnitudes.
So he converted proportions to fourth-degree geometric equalities in Effectionum
Geometricarum, and he did not stop with the triple angle in his theorems on angular
sections. These impossible magnitudes are put in contemporary mathematical context
in Sect. 5.1.
So far we see that Viète has introduced two related changes to classical geometry,
both of which he felt were worth singling out in Isagoge: the general identification of
proportions with equalities, and the motivation for working with higher-dimensional
magnitudes. Resolving proportions into equalities frees these magnitudes from the
ratios from which they sprung, so they can be manipulated as independent objects.
3.7 Arithmetizations before 1591
One important feature of Viète’s geometry that was commonplace in sixteenth-century

mathematics but was shunned in classical Greek geometry is that he admitted arith-
metizations to his magnitudes. Because numbers in classical Greek mathematics are
restricted to positive integers, they cannot be applied to lines, surfaces, and bodies.
But arithmetizations had crept into scholia to Euclid’s Elements as early as the first-
century CE (Mueller 1981, p. 50), around the same time that Heron was routinely
labeling lines and surfaces in geometric diagrams with fractional numbers.
Pappus of Alexandria (ca. early fourth-century CE) sometimes assigns numerical
values to lines and surfaces as an illustration of results that have already been derived
geometrically, and only as relative measures. The best example is Proposition 22 in
Book IV of the Collection. To illustrate the proposition he calls the area in the first
quadrant of a spiral 1, which makes the areas in the next three quadrants 7, 19, and 37.
That these are relative measures is seen by the fact that he then finds the lengths of the
lines from what we would call origin to the intersection points of the spiral with the
coordinate axes as 1, 2, 3, and 4. If the
√
areas
√
are√indeed 1, √7, 19, and 37, then according
to that scale the lengths should be π , π , π , and 8√π3 .36
2√ 3 4√ 3 6√ 3
Numbers in medieval Arabic arithmetic and algebra encompass any positive quan-
tity that can arise in calculation, including fractions and irrational roots. The utility
of these continuous numbers in mensuration guaranteed their persistence through-
out the medieval period and across to Europe, despite their incompatibility with the
concept of number in Aristotle, Euclid, and Nicomachus. It is because of the influ-
ence of this practical tradition that numbers are assigned to lines and areas in many
sixteenth-century scholia of Greek books. For Euclid’s Elements these include trans-
lations edited by Jacques Peletier (1557), Pierre Forcadel (in French, 1560), Xylander
(in German, 1562), François de Foix Candale (1566), Federico Commandino (1572),
and Christoph Clavius (1574). Irrational numbers naturally arise in these √ calculations,
like line CB in a diagram of Commandino which is found to be 15 − 125.37 Francis-
36 (Pappus 2010, p. 125).

37 (Euclid 1572, fol. 229b.24), from Commandino’s commentary to Proposition XIII.1.
123
266 J. A. Oaks
cus Barocius’s translation of Proclus’s commentary on Euclid’s first book (1560) and
Commandino’s edition of the works of Archimedes (1558) also contain several arith-
metizations. Joannes Baptista Memus’s calculations in his translation of Apollonius’s
Conics (1537) extend to include algebra on many pages, and Johann Scheubel’s trans-
lation of Euclid’s Elements (1550) begins with a 76-page introduction to algebra, and
numerical and algebraic calculations are found scattered among Euclid’s propositions.
Like in Pappus, the numbers in these scholia are used to illustrate the relative sizes of
the magnitudes, and were not intended to reflect any absolute system of measurement.
This relational nature of the numbers was always the case in trigonometry, too.
Astronomers since Antiquity had worked with trigonometric calculations in sexa-
gesimal notation based in purely geometric propositions. Numbers continued to be
expressed in sexagesimal notation through the medieval period, but Renaissance
astronomers often preferred base ten. Decimal fractions had not yet been developed
in Europe, so a large number was chosen for one side of a triangle and integer values
were calculated for the other sides. Regiomontanus’s sine table assumes a hypotenuse
of 60,000, so, for example, his sine of 30 degrees is given as 30,000.38 In Viète’s tables
of 1579 one side of a triangle is assigned the value of 100,000 from which the other
two sides are calculated. For a right triangle with base angle 30 degrees and altitude
100,000
√ Viète finds its base to be 173,205, which can be read as an approximation to
3 (Viète 1579a, fol. Hiij).
There were thus two approaches to arithmetizations for irrational roots in sixteenth-
century mathematics: √ scholia to Greek works on geometry usually show a sign for
roots, like “R” or “ ”, while trigonometric calculations show large integer approxi-
mations.
3.8 Arithmetizations in Viète’s works since 1591
Like the sixteenth-century scholiasts, Viète sometimes concludes his geometric

propositions with numerical examples. He does this in Proposition XIX in Pseudo-
Mesolabum (1595), whose enunciation reads: “If there are four straight lines in
continued proportion: given the sum of the means and the sum of the extremes, the
means and extremes are given individually.”39 After working through the diagram to
show the solution, he gives a “Paradigma” (Πaρ áδιγ μa), in which the solution is
illustrated with numbers. The sum of the extremes is posited as 35, and the sum of the
means as 30. His calculation follows the construction, and he redraws
√ two triangles
√
from the original diagram and labels their sides with numbers 95, 8125, 19, 325,
and 6. He finds the four lines to be “AE 27, EC 18, ED 12, EB 8.” (Viète 1595b, fol.
10a; 1646, p. 271). In other problems Viète follows the trigonometers by working with
large integers. He chooses a large power of ten for one side, and computes the others
from it. We have already seen this in the calculations Viète made with angular sections
in Sect. 3.5.
38 (Regiomontanus 1584, fols. 141aff). For the table of tangents, see fol. 31a.
39 “Si fuerint quatuor lineæ rectæ continuè proportionales. Dato adgregato mediarum & adgregato
extremarum, dantur singulæ mediæ vel extremæ.” (Viète 1595b, fol. 9a; 1646, p. 270).
123
Viète sometimes works the numerical calculations in his examples in logistice

numerosa, his term for the algebra current in his day. An example is Protasis V in
Chapter VII of Variorum, in which he derives the equality Z M 3 − AB · Z M 2 =
2Z M · AB 2 − AB 3 . For his numerical example he first makes line AB 1, and he makes
the unknown line ZM “1N” (like our x), and he then converts the geometric equality
into the algebraic equation “1C − 1Q æquabitur 2N − 1” (like our x 3 − x 2 = 2x − 1).
He then makes AB 100,000,000 and finds the value of ZM to be (approximately)
180,193,774.40
This leads to the question of the status of numbers in Viète’s works. His numbers
include fractions and irrational roots, but they are never zero, negative, or complex.
Reading Viète’s passages with numbers across all his published works shows that he
regarded numbers to be the measures of geometric magnitudes. Even in De Numerosa
Potestatum Ad Exegesim Resolutione, his only book devoted exclusively to numerical
calculation, numbers remain explicitly tied to geometry. For example, from “Model
for the analysis of a cube affected by the joining of a solid [consisting] of a coefficient
of length and the square on the side” (A3 + B A2 ) he writes:
The square of a certain number multiplied by a side & by 10,000, is 5,773,824.
In notation, 10,000Q + 1C equals 5,773,824. The question is what number this
is.
The number 5,773,824 is a cube joined with the solid under (sub) the square on
the side and the given length 10,000. [. . .] Thus since the solid is divided by a
length, it will be noted that the quotient is not the root itself but the square of the
root. This takes heed of the law of homogeneous terms.41
Another indication that numbers in Viète are tied to magnitudes is his description
of the last stage in algebraic problem-solving, from Isagoge Chapter VII:
rhetics or exegetics [. . .] performs its function both in regard to numbers if a
problem concerns a magnitude that is to be expressed by number, and in regard
to lengths, surfaces, and solids if it is necessary to show the magnitude itself.42
Numbers in Viète’s books have no independent existence outside geometry. It may be
that in private he also practiced number theory with indivisible units, or with some
other arithmetical system independent of geometry. But whatever pure arithmetic he
40 (Viète 1593a, fol. 11a; 1646, p. 364). In the 1593 printing line AB is misprinted twice as ZB, and the
100,000,000 is mistakenly written as 200,000,000. Only the first ZB is corrected in the 1646 edition.
41 “Quadratum numeri cuiusdam ductum in latus & in 10,000 facit 57,732,824. In notis 10,000N + 1C
æquatur 57,732,824. Quæritur quis fit numerus ille. | Numerus 57,732,824 est Cubus adiunctus Solido sub
lateris Quadrato & datâ longitudine 10,000. [. . .] ita tamen ut cum solidum dividatur per longitudinem,
quod inde oritur non intelligatur radix ipsa, sed radicis Quadratum. Illud enim est legi homogeneorum
attendisse.” (Viète 1600a, fol. 11b.-9; 1646, p. 182.11). As Witmer notes, both editions mistakenly write
the number as 57,732,824. The translation of the last part, “Thus since the solid [. . .]” is taken from (Viète
1983, p. 331).
42 “rhetics or exegetics [. . .] eáque potissimum ad artis ordinationem pertinere, cùm reliquæ duæ exem-
plorum sint potius quam præceptorum, ut logicis iure concedendum est, suum éxercet officium, tam circa
numeros, si de magnitudine numero explicandâ quæstio est, quàm circa longitudines, superficies, cor-
poráve, si magnitudinem re ipsa exhiberi oporteat.” (Viète 1591, fol. 8a.27; 1646, p. 10.29). The “rhetics
or exegetics” is written in Greek. Translation modified slightly from (Klein 1968, p. 346).
123
268 J. A. Oaks
may have endorsed does not enter into his published works. All numbers that he
calculates with in the treatises gathered in the Opera Mathematica are treated as if
they are accidental properties of geometric magnitudes.
3.9 Summary of Viète’s magnitudes and numbers
Geometric magnitudes in Viète do not possess any inherent metric, but they are metriz-
able and so are amenable to numerical calculation. This gives them a dual nature
with respect to their size: magnitudes have non-arithmetical measures compared with
other magnitudes that are manifested in ratio and proportion, and they can also take
on numerical measures. In this respect Viète’s magnitudes conform to those in other
sixteenth-century authors and commentators. But he diverges in a major way by work-
ing with magnitudes of dimension greater than three. These magnitudes appear in the
proportions of his main theorem on angular sections, and are useful for trigonometric
calculation. They attain independence from ratio and proportion by Viète’s stipulation
that proportions can be resolved into equalities.
All numbers with which Viète operates in his works are the measures of geometric
magnitudes. They can be any positive number that arises in geometric calculation,
including fractions and irrational roots, and they are never zero, negative, or complex.
Such numbers had been the basis for arithmetic and algebra in books stretching back
at least to ninth-century Baghdad. They are in direct violation of the idea of number in
Euclid, Apollonius, and Archimedes, but like most other sixteenth-century algebraists,
Viète does not address this issue.
4 Logistice numerosa and logistice speciosa
Viète works with two kinds of algebra: traditional numerical algebra, which he calls
logistice numerosa, and his new algebra, which he calls logistice speciosa. We have
already seen a couple examples of logistice numerosa in Sect. 3.8, one from the
Protasis in Variorum and the other in the calculation from De Numerosa Potestatum
Ad Exegesim Resolutione. Logistice numerosa and logistice speciosa will sometimes
be translated as “numerical logistic” and “specious logistic”, respectively.
4.1 Introduction to the two notations
Viète’s logistice numerosa falls into the category of “premodern algebra”. Concep-
tually and structurally it matches algebra in ancient Greek (Diophantus), medieval
Arabic, Latin, and Italian, and the algebra of sixteenth-century Europe (Christianidis
and Oaks 2013; Oaks 2009, 2010, 2017). In premodern algebra the powers of the
unknown are given individual names. Viète took his names and corresponding nota-
tion from Xylander’s 1575 translation of Diophantus’s Arithmetica. The name they
give to the first-degree unknown is numerus, the second degree unknown is called
quadratum, and the third degree is called cubus. The three names are abbreviated in
notation as N, Q, and C, respectively. Higher powers follow the standard nomenclature
123
using combinations of “Q” and “C”: “QQ” for the fourth power, “QC” for the fifth, etc.
(Diophantus 1575, p. 1). An example of an equation in numerical logistic from Viète’s
De Æquationum Emendatione is “1C. + 6Q. − 48N, æquetur 512” (Viète 1615b, p.
72.3; 1646, p. 131.7). The left side has one cube and six squares which have been
diminished by 48 (unknown) numbers, and this amount is equal to 512. The modern
version of this equation is x 3 + 6x 2 − 48x = 512.
The powers of the unknown in premodern algebra were regarded as being different
“types” of number. Words with meanings like the English “type”, “species”, or “kind”
appear in Greek (eidos in Diophantus), Arabic (jins, dharb, nau , as.l), medieval
Italian (spezie/spetie), and in the sixteenth-century Jean Borrel calls them by the Latin
word species. The powers are also called by words with meanings close to “name”,
“denomination”, or “term” in Greek (epônymiai), Arabic (ism), Italian (nome, deno-
miatione, termino), French (denominacion, from Chuquet), and in Italian the word
dignità, meaning “rank”, is common in Pacioli, Tartaglia, and Bombelli.43
If two terms are of the same type, such as 3N and 5N, they can be added to get a
single term, which in this example is 8N. In Viète, as with other authors of his century,
terms of different type are added with the word plus, which he shows in notation as
“+”. The result of adding, say, 3N to 5Q can only be expressed with two names, as 3N
+ 5Q. Al-Bı̄rūnı̄ (11th c.), Pacioli (1494), and Stifel (1544) all compare the powers of
the unknown in algebra with different denominations of coin. As Pacioli notes, one
cannot add “4 co” to “3 ce” (like “4N” to “3Q”) any more than one can add 4 ducati
to 3 fiorini, and the result can only be written as “3 co p̃ 4 ce or 4 ce p̃ 3 co” (the “p̃”
is an abbreviation for più, the Italian word for plus) (Pacioli 1494, fol. 112a.-4).
In premodern algebra the letters or signs used in the notation, whether Diophantus’s
“ς ”, “ΔY ”, and “K Y ”, Pacioli’s “co”, “ce”, and “cu”, Viète’s “N”, “Q”, and “C”, or
any of the many other notations used across the centuries, do not stand for values the
way our x, x 2 , and x 3 do. In our “6x 2 ” the 6 and the x 2 are both numbers whose
multiplication is implied by concatenation. In Viète’s “6Q”, by contrast, the Q is the
kind of number, and the 6 tells how many there are. It is like saying “6 dollars”. For
the example cited above Viète could not have written “C + 6Q” because it would be
like writing “euro and 6 dollars”, which leaves unanswered the question of how many
euros there are. We can write “x 3 + 6x 2 ” because the x 3 stands for a value, and not a
kind the way Viète’s “C” does. Values are manifest only when a number is attached,
like “1C”. Think of it like this: “euro” is a kind or denomination, while “1 euro” is a
value. For this reason nowhere in Viète’s works will a “coefficient” of 1 be omitted
in logistice numerosa, nor is it omitted in notation in premodern algebra in any text
(Oaks 2017).
Viète announces his “newly-introduced logistic with species”44 in the very first
paragraph of Isagoge. The notation in logistice speciosa functions differently than
its numerical counterpart. The numerical equation just given above derives from a
corresponding equation in species, which is shown in the 1646 Opera Mathematica as
43 (Christianidis and Oaks 2013, pp. 136–137; Oaks 2010, p. 28; 2012, p. 43; Marre 1880, p. 738; Borrel
1559, pp. 123ff). These are just samples. I have not tried to be exhaustive.
44 “...logisticem sub specie noviter inducendam” (Viète 1591, fol. 4a.21; 1646, p. 1.25).
123
270 J. A. Oaks
A cubus + B3 in A quad. − D plano in A, æquetur Z solido.
In the original 1615 printing it is shown as45

⎫
A cubus ⎬
+ B ter in A quadratum æquetur Z solido.
⎭
− D plano in A.
(Witmer translates this as “A3 + 3B A2 − D P A = Z S ” (Viète 1983, p. 243)).

Viète distinguishes unknowns from knowns by making the former vowels and the
latter consonants. He also distinguishes between magnitudes of dimension two or
greater whose lower-degree forms enter into the present calculation, from magnitudes
whose lower-degree forms do not. For these purposes two series of terms are used.
In the first series, the square of A is written as “A quadratum”, the square of B as “B
quadratum”, and the same for the other letters. The cubes are “A cubus”, “B cubus”,
etc., and the fourth powers are “A quadrato-quadratum”, “B quadrato-quadratum”,
etc. Fifth powers are indicated by “quadrato-cubus”, sixth powers by “cubo-cubus”,
etc. Viète prefaces his list of these powers in Chapter III of Isagoge: “Magnitudes
that ascend or descend proportionally in keeping with their nature from one genus to
another are called Scalars (Scalares)”.46 I will call this the “scalar” series, where by
“scale” one should think of a ladder or a flight of stairs.
If a two-dimensional term is presented in a problem and its one-dimensional root is
not invoked, the label is taken from the second set of terms. In these cases Viète writes
“A planum”, “B planum”, etc. Three-dimensional terms whose lower-dimensional ver-
sions will not be called on are introduced as “A solidum”, “B solidum”, etc., and the
labels continue with “plano-planum”, “plano-solidum”, etc. Viète calls these “magni-
tudes of comparison” (magnitudinum comparatarum (Viète 1591, fol. 5a.4; 1646, p.
14)). I will call this the “comparison” series.
Some historians have viewed Viète’s names in the scalar series as belonging to
unknowns (vowels) and the names of the comparison series as belonging to given yet
indeterminate magnitudes (consonants).47 But a look at how the two series of terms
are applied shows otherwise. Examples of “A planum” are in Zetetics II.19, 20, and
22, while “E planum” and “E solidum” can be found in many of the theorems in
De Recognitione Aequationum. Terms like “D quadrato” and “B cubus” are common
throughout Viète’s works.
A nice example illustrating the two sets of terms is Theorem I in Chapter XII of
De Recognitione Aequationum.48 One equation from this theorem is “E quad.quad.
45 (Viète 1615b, p. 72.2; 1646, p. 131.4). The “Z” in (1615b) is mistakenly shown in lower case. I have
restored it.
46 “Magnitudines quæ ex genere ad genus suâ vi proportionaliter ad scendunt vel descendunt vocentur
Scalares.” (Viète 1591, fol. 4b.37; 1646, p. 3.1). Translation adapted from (Viète 1983, p. 16).
47 For examples (Bos 2001, p. 149; Freguglia 2008b, p. 154). Freguglia’s explanation of an occurrence of
“B quad.” on p. 158 is incorrect. On the other hand Louis Charbonneau and Michel Serfati each explain the
two series correctly. (Charbonneau 2006, p. 68; Serfati 2005, pp. 214ff).
48 (Viète 1615b, p. 27.12; 1646, p. 99.4). I will give the forms of the equations from the 1646 edition. The
only difference is the arrangement of the terms on the page.
123
+ B quad. in E quad, æquabitur B quad. in Z planum”. The first power term B was
introduced at the start of the problem in the equation “A quad. + B in A æquetur Z
plano”, so its second power is the scalar term “B quad.”. The goal is to find the root E,
so it too has the scalar labels. The root of “Z plano” does not appear in the problem, so
its label comes from the comparison series. Viète then writes “If, however, the root, E
quad., were set up as a plane, the statement of the equation would be E plani-quadratum
+ B quadrato in E planum, æquabitur B quad. in Z planum”.49 Here the sought-after E
is presumed to be two-dimensional, so it is called “E planum”, and its square assumes
the label from the scalar series: “E plani-quadratum”.
The names given to the elements of each series reflect this distinction. In the scalar
series “quadratum” and “cubus”, meaning “square” and “cube”, designate the powers
of some magnitude. These terms, and their combinations for the higher powers, are
borrowed from the logistice numerosa in Xylander’s translation of Diophantus. In the
comparison series “planum” and “solidum”, meaning “plane” and “solid”, are generic
terms for magnitudes of dimensions 2 and 3. They are not powers like the terms in the
scalar series. The higher-dimensional terms follow the pattern of those in the scalar
series.
Returning to Viète’s equation “A cubus + B3 in A quad. − D plano in A, æquetur
Z solido”, we can immediately note two related ways that the notation of logistice
speciosa differs from that of logistice numerosa. First, the “A cubus” does not carry a
coefficient of 1, suggesting that it stands for a value and not a kind. Second, the prepo-
sition in indicates that the “B3” (“B ter” in (1615)) and the “D plano” are multiplied
by the “A quadratum” and “A”. In fact this is just what Viète explains in Chapter IIII
of Isagoge. Given two magnitudes A and B, multiplication (ducere) “is conveniently
designated by the terms in or sub, like ‘A in B”’.50
The more obvious difference between the two algebras, and one that Viète himself
emphasizes, is that in logistice speciosa literal coefficients take the place of numbers.
Because the coefficients are undetermined, this new algebra operates at a more general
level than numerical algebra. One purpose of the coefficients is to ensure that all the
terms in an equation are homogeneous. The different scales “latus”, “quadratum”,
“cubus”, etc. are heterogeneous, as Viète emphasizes in his “lex homogeneorum” in
Isagoge Chapter III. Only terms of the same dimension can be added and subtracted.
“A cubus” is three-dimensional, so to make the “A quad” term also three-dimensional
it is multiplied by the first-degree coefficient “B”. Likewise for the other two terms
in the equation. The ter [“thrice”, in (1615b)] or “3” [in (1646)] tell us that there are
three B’s present. This number acts like a premodern “coefficient” to count the term.
49 “Quum autem ipsum E quadratum Radix statuetur plana, hæc erit æquationis enunciato.

E plani-quadratum.
æquabitur B quadrato in Z planum.” (This is how the equation appears in
+ B quadratum in E planum
(1615).) (Viète 1615b, p. 27.-3; 1646, p. 99.11). Translation adapted from (Viète 1983, p. 192).
50 “designatibur commodè vocabulo IN vel SUB , veluti A in B.” (Viète 1591, fol. 5b.17; 1646, p. 5.-12).
The passage continues: “[. . .] by which it will be signified that the one has been multiplied in the other;
or as others say (ut alii), that it is produced sub A & B”. Translation adapted from (Klein 1968, p. 333).
Viète always multiplies species with the preposition in. He may have included the geometric term sub to
strengthen the connection with geometry.
123
272 J. A. Oaks
No equation in logistice numerosa contains literal coefficients, and numbers do not

serve as coefficients in any equation in logistice speciosa.
4.2 What are these letters?
What are the letters that Viète works with in logistice speciosa? If the unknowns in
logistice numerosa are continuous numbers, what kind of object are his A, B plano,
E cubus, etc.? Are they numbers too, or maybe geometric magnitudes? Or, as Jacob
Klein claimed, symbolic entities that are neither numbers nor magnitudes but which
can represent either? With the background material of Sects. 2 and 3 in mind, the answer
emerges cleanly by reading how Viète describes them. Species are first introduced in
Chapter IIII of Isagoge:
On the rules of calculating with species. Chapter IIII.
Numerical logistic employs numbers, specious logistic employs species or signs
for things, as, say, the letters of the alphabet.
There are four basic rules for calculating with species just as there are for cal-
culating with numbers.
RULE I.
To add a magnitude to a magnitude.
Let there be two magnitudes A & B. One is to be added to the other.51
Viète calls the species A, B, etc. “magnitudes” (magnitudines) here and throughout
this and later books. He does not give a definition of magnitudo anywhere in his
published works, so we should expect that contemporary readers understood him to
mean geometric magnitudes of dimension 1, 2, and 3, to the exclusion of numbers or
other quantities.
In the next paragraph Viète writes: “their sum will be A plus B if they are simple
lengths or breadths”.52 So far this is consistent with the idea that the species are geo-
metric magnitudes. We gain more insight from his explanation of higher-dimensional
magnitudes from the same book, already quoted above: “Since all magnitudes are
either lines or surfaces or solids, of what earthly use are proportions above triplicate
[. . .]”. The whole quotation implies that magnitudines in Viète are geometric mag-
nitudes, including those of higher dimension. Let’s look again at another quotation
already (partially) given above:
rhetics or exegetics [. . .] performs its function both in regard to numbers if a
problem concerns a magnitude that is to be expressed by number, and in regard
to lengths, surfaces, and solids if it is necessary to show the magnitude itself.
In the latter case the analyst turns geometer by executing a true construction
51 “De præceptis Logistices speciosæ. Caput. IIII. | Logistice numerosa est quæ per numeros, Speciosa quæ
per species seu rerum formas exhibetur, ut pote per Alphabetica elementa. | Logistices speciosæ canonica
præcepta sunt quatuor, ut numerosæ. | PRÆCEPTUM I. | Magnitudinem magnitudini addere. | Sunto duæ
magnitudines A & B. Oportet alteram alteri addere.” (Viète 1591, fol. 5a; 1646, p. 4). Translation adapted
from (Viète 1983, pp. 17–18).
52 “...adgregatæ erunt A plus B, siquidem sint simplices longitudines latitudinés-ue”. Translation adapted
from (Viète 1983, p. 18).
123
after having worked out a solution that is analogous to the true. In the former he
becomes an arithmetician, solving numerically whatever powers, either pure or
affected, are exhibited.53
Here “the magnitude itself” (“magnitudinem re ipsa”) is unquestionably a geomet-
ric magnitude and not the continuous number that measures it. Viète also says here
that numbers can express magnitudes, which we already knew from his geometric
works. Note also that the person who operates on the numerical measures of geomet-
ric magnitudes is an arithmetician, while the person who performs a construction is a
geometer.
Chapter VI, Theorem III of De Recognitione Aequationum (1615) offers further
support for a geometric interpretation of the species. Viète writes at one point this
observation in species: “If A cube − B plane thrice in A, equals D solid, and if the
square of D solid is less than four times the cube of B plane, then B plane thrice in
E − E cube, equals D solid again”. He then gives a numerical version: “If 1C − 21N
equals 20, since four times the cube of 7 is greater than 400, then 21N − 1C equals
20”. This is followed up with:
There would be little difference if this were phrased geometrically, for the geome-
ter would say B plane is the sum of the squares of three proportional straight
lines and D solid is the product of the sum of the extremes and the square of the
mean [. . .]54
Here the species “B plane” and “D solid” fall squarely in the domain of the geometer,
and not the arithmetician. The two algebras, logistice numerosa and logistice speciosa,
apply to two distinct ways of working with magnitudes. The species do not desig-
nate the numerical measures of magnitudes, but the magnitudes themselves. Because
the species are not connected with any diagram and enter solely into computational
relationships with one another like the Greek computational geometry described in
Sect. 3.4, the letters stand for the relative sizes that these magnitudes have with respect
to one another, and which are expressed with ratio and proportion.
Viète’s species A, B, D quad., E solidum, etc. stand for Viètan magnitudes, that is,
for (the relative sizes of) non-arithmetized (but arithmetizable) geometric magnitudes
with no upper limit on dimension. There was no need for him to give a definition of
“magnitude” in his books because he was using a commonly understood word. The
only feature that would have been new for his readers is that his magnitudes can assume
dimension greater than three, and Viète explains this in Chapter VIII of Isagoge.
53 “Et hîc se prȩbet Geometram Analysta opus verum efficiundo post alîus similis vero resolutionem:illic
Logistam, potestates quascumque numero exhibitas, sive puras, sive adfectas resolvendo.” (Viète 1591, fol.
8a.-10; 1646, p. 10.-13). The translation of the second sentence is taken from (Viète 1983, p. 29).
54 “Neque verò in Geometricâ phrasi hic erit magna dissimilitudo: Enim verò dicet Geometra, B planum
esse aggregatum quadratorum à tribus proportionalibus lineis rectis, D vero solidum quod fit ab aggregato
extremarum in mediæ quadratum” (Viète 1615b, p. 11.-6; 1646, p. 91.5). Translation modified slightly from
(Viète 1983, p. 173).
123
274 J. A. Oaks
4.3 Reading anew key passages and other elements in Viète’s works
Let us back up and look again at a couple passages in light of this notion of geometric
species. One just quoted above is: “Numerical logistic employs numbers, specious
logistic employs species or signs for things, as, say, the letters of the alphabet.” An
example will help here. Compare an equation in species,
B solidum in A − A quad.-quad., æquetur Z plano-plano,
with its counterpart in numbers,
1,248N − 1QQ. æquari 2,480.55
The version in logistice numerosa employs the numbers 1,248 and 2,480, while the
version in logistice speciosa employs the species B solidum and Z plano-plano. What
Viète intends by writing “employs number” and “employs species” is that the two
algebras employ them as coefficients. And when he writes “as, say, letters of the
alphabet” he is telling us that he will represent these coefficients with letters. He does
not say “Specious logistic employs geometric magnitudes” because it is the particular
way of expressing magnitudes with single-letter species, and not the usual way of
naming them with letters from a diagram, that he wishes to emphasize.
Another passage is this one from the first page of Isagoge: “Zetetics, however, has its
own method of proceeding. It does not employ its logistic on numbers, a shortcoming
of the old analysis, but works with a newly discovered logistic of species, which
is far more fruitful and powerful that numerical logistic for comparing magnitudes
with one another”.56 Traditional algebra (the “old analysis”) is for Viète a tool for
finding numerical measures of geometric magnitudes. His new logistice speciosa is
superior for “comparing magnitudes” by virtue of the generality of using undetermined
letters instead of determined numbers. This is particularly helpful for trigonometric
calculation, where one is required to solve the same general problem for many different
possible givens. In traditional numerical algebra the givens are assigned at the start, so
the equation must be set up and simplified for each application. In logistice speciosa
this work is done once with literal coefficients. With a simplified equation or proportion
expressed in species the values of the unknown can be calculated directly for as many
different sets of knowns as one wants.
Viète often shows diagrams in which the sides of triangles are labeled with species.
Sometimes the dimensions do not match, as in Proposition XLVI in Notæ Priores.
55 From Proposition III, Chapter XVIII in De Recognitione Aequationum (Viète 1615b, p. 54; 1646, p.
111). The equation in species is shown as it appears in the 1646 Opera Mathematica. In the original printing
it is

B solidum in A
æquetur Z plano-plano.
−A quadrato-quadrato.
56 “Forma autem Zetesim ineundi ex arte propriâ est, non iam in numeris suam logicam exercente, quæ
fuit oscitantia veterum Analystarum, sed per logisticem sub specie noviter inducendam, feliciorem multò
& potiorem numerosâ ad comparandum inter se magnitudines” (Viète 1591, fol. 4a.19; 1646, p. 1.23).
Translation modified from (Viète 1983, p. 13).
123
There the hypotenuse of a third triangle is labeled “Z in X”, and the legs are labeled
“B in G + D in F” and “B in F = D in G”, all two-dimensional expressions (the
“=” indicates the difference between the terms). But reading how Viète words the
proposition shows that these labels do not represent the sides themselves. Instead,
they are merely proportional to the sides: “Let the hypotenuse of a third [triangle] be
analogous (similis) to the product of the hypotenuse of the first and the hypotenuse
of the second, namely Z in X”.57 Viète repeatedly uses this word similis to express
proportion. Stated generally, a1 , a2 , . . . , an are analogous to (similis) b1 , b2 , . . . , bn if
ai : a j :: bi : b j for i and j between 1 and n. The ai ’s might be heterogeneous with the
bi ’s, as in the example of the triangle. Because his intention is to eventually perform
numerical calculations, Viète often works with species that are merely proportional to
the magnitudes to which they are assigned.
Viète’s use of the word species has also generated some discussion.58 But before
addressing the term “species” we should first cover the term “genus”. In Greek geom-
etry magnitudes are homogeneous if and only if they are of the same dimension.
Euclid’s word “òμoγενων” in definition V.3. is naturally rendered into Latin as “eius-
dem generis” (“of the same genus”) by Commandino and other translators.59 Viète,
too, writes in his Isagoge of latus, quadratum, cubus, quadrato-quadratum, etc., as
being different genera,60 and he uses the terms homogenea and heterogenea in explain-
ing restrictions and rules for operating on his algebraic terms in Isagoge Chapters III
(outlining the lex homogeneorum) and IIII (operating on terms).
Because Viète uses different letters to designate independent known and unknown
magnitudes, he follows Aristotle in dividing each genus into species. So A, B, D, etc.
are different species within the genus latus, A quad., B plano, D quad., etc. are different
species within the genus quadratum, etc. Diophantus could call the different powers of
the unknown in his algebra ιδ (“species”) because in numerical algebra the powers,
being numbers, are homogeneous. In Viète’s system the powers are heterogeneous,
so he calls them genera. He still has a need to classify the letters making up each
genus, so he calls them species. His use of the word species is not a generalization or
modification of Diophantus’s ιδoς . Both are terms of classification and are used in
different ways.
4.4 Creating an algebra for geometry
To create an algebra for geometry analogous to numerical algebra Viète had to over-
come three problems with non-arithmetized geometric magnitudes: (a) How can
equations be formed if the magnitudes participate in the category of “quantity” through
ratio and proportion? (b) If magnitudes of different dimension are heterogeneous, how
57 “Fiat tertii hypotenusa similis ei quod fit ex hypotenusa primi in hypotenusam secundi, nempe Z in X.”
(Viète 1646, p. 34.17).
58 See footnote 8 in (Viète 1983, p. 13), and (Klein 1968, pp. 172ff).
59 (Euclid 1572, fol. 57a.-4). Others who use the same phrase are Campanus, Zamberti, Scheubel, Peletier,
and Clavius.
60 (Viète 1591, fol. 4b.-10; 1646, p. 3.1). The word appears in other places in his works with the same
meaning.
123
276 J. A. Oaks
can they be added and subtracted? (c) How can meaning be given to magnitudes of
dimension greater than three?
Viète is emphatic in three places in the Isagoge, and they correspond to his solu-
tions to these three problems. The first is the prefatory remark to his stipulation that
proportions are equivalent to equations: “But the supreme stipulation of equations and
proportions and which is all-important in analysis is [. . .]”. By postulating that any
proportion a : b :: c : d can be resolved into the equation ad = bc he has solved
problem (a). The second place comes just after this, in the beginning of Chapter III:
“The original and perpetual law of equations or proportions, which, because it con-
cerns the concept of homogeneity, is called the law of homogeneous magnitudes, is
this: [. . .]”61 After some explanation he adds: “Much of the fogginess and obscurity
of the old analysis is due to their not having been attentive to these [rules]”.62 The
solution to (b) is given in point 6 (mis-numbered as “9” in both 1591 and 1646), where
he explains that one multiplies lower-power terms by coefficients to make them homo-
geneous with the highest power. It is here that the word “coefficient” (coëfficiente) first
appears in connection with algebra.
The powers of the unknown in any algebra should be unbounded. For an algebra
founded in non-arithmetized geometry this means that the dimensions of the magni-
tudes should have no upper limit. It is no surprise that Viète is most emphatic about his
solution to (c). In Chapter VIII, after asking what use higher-dimensional magnitudes
can be, he writes in point 27 “Hence the mystery of angular sections, perceived by no
one up to the present either arithmetically or geometrically, is now clear”. It is not only
here that Viète shows his enthusiasm for angular sections. He is even more jubilant
in the preamble he gives to Theorem III, the main theorem on angular sections in Ad
Problema: “Moved by joy over this discovery, O divine Melusine, I sacrificed to you a
hundred sheep instead of Pythagoras’ one”.63 And he refers again to the “mysterium
angularium sectionum” in his introduction to the main theorem in Variorum (Viète
1593a, fol. 15a.19; 1646, p. 371.-5). Indeed it must have been mysterious to see four,
five, and higher-dimensional magnitudes materialize in the course of his calculations.
4.5 Anatomy of the solutions of problems
Viète implements his new method in the 82 problems given across the five books of
his Zeteticorum (1593). Each problem, or zetetic (zeteticum), asks for one or more
geometric magnitudes. To show the basic procedure for solving problems in species
I explain each stage in the context of Zetetic XVIII from Book II (Viète 1593c, fol.
8b; 1646, p. 54). Where Diophantus had structured his problems on propositions in
Greek geometry with the necessary modifications due to his solutions by numerical
61 “Prima & perpetua lex æqualitatum seu proportionum, quæ, quoniam de homogeneis concepta est,
dicitur lex homogeneorum, hæc est [. . .]” (Viète 1591, fol. 4b.26; 1646, p. 2.-13).
62 “Quibus non attendisse causa fuit multæ caliginis & cæcutiei veterum Analystarum.” (Viète 1591, fol.
4b.-11; 1646, p. 2.-2). Translated in (Viète 1983, p. 16).
63 “Cuius inventi lætitiâ adfectus, ô Diva Melusinis, tibi oves centum pro unâ Pythagoræâ immolavi.”
(Viète 1595a, fol. 8b; 1646, p. 315). English translation from (Klein 1968, p. 253 n. 197). Pythagoras got
only one sheep because his triangle has only has one angle at the vertex. Klein calls this a “playful remark”.
123
algebra, Viète borrows the structure of solutions in his geometric algebra from both
Greek geometry and Diophantus.
Zetetic XVIII
[Enunciation]
Given the sum of the sides and the sum of the cubes, to distinguish the sides.64
Enunciations are typically stated rhetorically, with no appeal to notation.65 Although
the enunciation is stated in geometric terms, it is not concerned with the position or
orientation of the magnitudes. Marco Panza calls such geometry problems “purely
quantitative. They do not rely on the respective positions of a number of geometric
objects, but only on the relations that certain objects have as long as they are quantities,
that is, on their purely quantitative relations.” (Panza 2006, p. 279). Purely quantitative
problems are fairly common in Greek geometry, and they are the problems that can be
solved via algebra, as Maximilien Marie (1884, p. 4) noted over a century ago. Indeed,
like most of Viète’s propositions, this one is posed with the idea that the solution will
found numerically at the end.
[Setting-out and goal ]
Let B be the given sum of the sides, D solid truly the sum of the cubes. To
distinguish the sides.
After stating the enunciation the Greeks and Viète give the setting-out (ekthesis) and
goal (“definition” or “specification”, diorismós). If Viète had solved this problem syn-
thetically he would have produced a diagram and restated the enunciation in terms of
the particular magnitudes. A solution by geometric analysis, too, requires a diagram,
which effectively fixes the given magnitudes. Diophantus at this stage assigns numer-
ical values to the given numbers and he restates the goal in terms of them. Viète’s
setting-out is similar, but in logistice speciosa this means assigning the undetermined
species B, D, etc., to the given magnitudes.
[Zetetic]
Let the difference in the sides be E. Then B + E is double the larger side, B −
E double the smaller side. Then the sum of the cubes is B cubed 2 + B in E
squared 6,66⎧which equals⎫ D solid 8.
⎨ D solid 4 ⎬
Wherefore −B cubed equals E squared.67
⎩ ⎭
B 3
But given a square gives the side, & given the sum of the sides & their difference
gives the sides.68
64 “Datâ summâ laterum & summâ Cuborum distinguere latera”.

65 The two exceptions among Viète’s zetetics are the last two of Book V. There the questions are already
posed in terms of species.
66 The “+” is mistakenly shown as “−” in 1593.
67 The equation is shown as “ D sol. 4, − B cub. æquatur E quadrato” in the 1646 Opera Mathematica. In
B3
Witmer’s notation it is “(4D S − B 3 )/3B is equal to E 2 ”.
68 Zetetic I.1.
123
278 J. A. Oaks
Thus given the sum of the sides & the sum of the cubes, the sides are given.
Because Diophantus solves his problems by algebra he begins this stage by naming an
unknown in terms of the names of the powers, often as “1 arithmos ”. He then applies
the conditions of the enunciation to set up, simplify, and solve an equation. Diophantus
then verifies that his numbers satisfy the conditions. In geometric problem-solving,
too, the solution obtained in the construction is proven to satisfy the requirement of
the enunciation. Viète begins this stage much the same as Diophantus. He names an
unknown using the vowel A or E (only these vowels are used in Zeteticorum) and he
sets up and simplifies an equation or proportion. But he does not yet solve it. Viète
calls this part of the solution, from naming an unknown to the statement of the final
equation or proportion, “zetetics” (zetesi), and it is described in Chapter V of Isagoge.
This is different from the word zeteticorum, which appears to mean a “geometrical
problem” that he solves in species.
[Poristic]
Indeed, quadruple the sum of the cubes minus the cube of the sum of the sides,
divided by thrice the sum of the sides, yields the square of the difference of the
sides.
In this stage Viète produces a general rule in rhetorical form from the equation or
proportion. This is made possible by the undetermined givens from which the equation
or proportion is composed. Diophantus has no such stage because he has found a
determinate solution and not a general rule or theorem. Viète calls this stage poristic,
and it is described by him in Chapter VI of Isagoge. Viète’s notion of poristic is close
but not identical to Pappus’s descriptions of porisms in Greek mathematics (Ferrier
1980, pp. 134ff; Pappus 1986, pp. 547–572).
[Rhetic/exegetic]
Let B be 10, D solid be 370. E 1N , 1Q equals 16.
Viète calls the last step required to solve the problem “rhetics” or “exegetics”, and it is
described in Chapter VII of Isagoge. Unfortunately it is not clear if Viète intended any
difference between the two words. In the passage from this chapter quoted twice above,
rhetics might seem to pertain to numerical calculation and exegetics to geometric
construction: “rhetics or exegetics [. . .] performs its function both in regard to numbers
if a problem concerns a magnitude that is to be expressed by number, and in regard
to lengths, surfaces, and solids if it is necessary to show the magnitude itself”. The
etymologies of the two words point this way, too. Klein suggests that “it is called
rhetic [. . .] with respect to the numbers to which it leads and which can be expressed
by the ordinary number names of our language; it is called exegetic [. . .] in respect
to the geometric magnitudes which it makes directly available to sight.” (Klein 1968,
p. 167). But the title of Chapter VII is simply De officio Rhetices, and in points 23
and 24 of Chapter VIII Viète speaks of both arithmetical and geometric exegetics
(“Exegeticen in Arithmeticis”, “Exegeticen in Geometricis”). With no clear direction
from Viète I will write “rhetics/exegetics”, or simply “exegetics”, for the finding of
numerical and geometric solutions.
123
Viète opts for numerical calculation in each zetetic except IV.4, where he omits this
stage entirely. Once specific numbers are assigned to the given species the equation
or proportion can be transformed into the equivalent equation in logistice numerosa.
In our example the unknown line E is made “1N”, and the equation “1Q equals 16” is
set up. The solution is not stated, but it is obtained easily: 1N must be 4, which is the
difference in the sides. The sum of the sides is 10, so the sides can found by Zetetic
I.1 to be 3 and 7. In many problems the answer falls out immediately on substituting
numbers for the givens. In those cases Viète has no need to restate the equation in
logistice numerosa.
Although Viète himself shows no examples of geometric exegetics, others who
followed him did. Marino Ghetaldi and Jean-Louis Vaulezard both read the final equa-
tion or proportion as instructions for constructing the solution geometrically (Ghetaldi
1630; Viète 1630). Incidentally, Ghetaldi renames zetetics, poristics, and exegetics as
resolutio, porisma, and compositio, respectively (Ghetaldi 1630, pp. 13ff).
All but three of the 48 problems in Books I, II, and III of Zeteticorum are determi-
nate, while all but one of the problems in Books IV and V are indeterminate. Eight
determinate problems from Book I and most indeterminate problems are adapted from
Diophantus’s Arithmetica. For the indeterminate problems Viète specifies that he seeks
a rational numerical solution by asking “To find numerically” (Invenire numero) the
magnitudes. The enunciation to Zetetic V.7 is typical: “To find numerically three sides
[such that the rectangle] under (sub) any two make a plane that added to a given plane
yields a square.”69
Not all problems contain every stage. Several problems in Books II, III, and IV
reduce to previously solved problems, so the zetetic stage and sometimes another
stage are omitted. Also, no indeterminate problem contains a poristic stage.
5 Viète’s algebra nova in various contexts
5.1 Impossible objects
Mathematicians in the sixteenth century (and indeed in other times as well) had a
tendency to turn a blind eye to the problem of working with impossible objects that
happen to be useful. One example is the prevalence of irrational numbers in arithmetic,
algebra, and geometry. Michael Stifel writes about these potentially false numbers in
his Arithmetica Integra (1544):
With good reason there is controversy over irrational numbers, whether they
are true numbers or false. Since, in proving geometrical figures, when rational
numbers fail us irrational numbers take their place and prove exactly those things
that rational numbers could not prove, [. . .] we are moved and compelled to assert
that they truly are numbers, compelled, that is, by the results that follow from
their use—results that we perceive to be real, certain, and constant. On the other
hand, other considerations [. . .] compel us to deny that irrational numbers are
69 “Invenire numero tria Latera, sub quibus binis quod fit Planum adscito dato plano, eveniat Quadratum.”
(Viète 1593c, fol. 22a; 1646, p. 78).
123
280 J. A. Oaks
numbers at all. To wit, when we seek to subject them to numeration [. . .] we

find that they flee away perpetually, so that not one of them can be apprehended
precisely in itself. [. . .] Now that cannot be called a true number which is of such
a nature that it lacks precision. [. . .] Therefore, just as an infinite number is not
a number, so an irrational number is not a true number, but lies hidden in a kind
of cloud of infinity.70
Just as with Viète’s higher-dimensional magnitudes, it is the utility of irrationals that
compelled some people to regard them as true numbers. Whatever they may or may
not be, they work.
Other impossible numbers from that time—even more impossible, one could say—
are the negative and complex numbers in Cardano, Bombelli, etc. Again, these numbers
are named, calculated with, and investigated prior to any philosophical justification
of their existence. And in algebra several sixteenth-century authors began admitting
irrational coefficients to their numerical equations even if it violated the concept of
a monomial as an aggregation (Oaks 2017). Viète’s adoption of higher-dimensional
magnitudes because they are useful is in keeping with attitudes of his time, and is
not an indication of a profound intuition into the nature of geometry, nor on the other
hand of a flagrant and reprehensible abuse of mathematics. It is another example of a
sixteenth-century mathematician following syntax at the expense of semantics.
5.2 Trigonometry and numerical calculation
In the last three or four years of his life Viète was working on a draft of a treatise on
astronomy. The unfinished Ad Harmonicon Coeleste Libri Quinque Priores is devoted
to the development of geometric models of planetary theory in the tradition of Ptolemy
and Copernicus. The draft survives in six manuscripts, one of them in Viète’s own hand
(Van Egmond 1985, p. 387). Noel Swerdlow analyzed this work in a 1975 article. He
relates that “Viète had little patience with the mathematical aptitude of astronomers”,
and cites a passage from Apollonius Gallus to that effect (Swerdlow 1975, p. 185; Viète
1600b, fol. 11a; 1646, p. 343). In particular Viète criticizes Ptolemy’s and Coperni-
cus’s insufficient understanding of geometry, which he held as key to astronomical
calculation. “Viète took up planetary theory purely as a mathematician—as a geome-
ter of great insight and as an algebraist using the techniques of extracting equations
from geometric models and examining their properties as equations”. So, Swerdlow
writes, “[t]he treatise is not really the work of an astronomer, at least not in the sense
of showing concern about the real motions of the heavens [. . .] His interest is in tak-
ing planetary theory handed down to him and developing equivalent but more refined
geometric models and more rapid and certain techniques for deriving parameters and
computing equations and tables.” (Swerdlow 1975, p. 186). One could call Viète a
geometer in the service of astronomy.
The geometric foundation of astronomy had been a major interest of Viète’s at least
since the early 1570’s. His two works on trigonometry of 1579 were intended to be the
70 (Stifel 1544, fol. 103a). Translation taken mainly from (Nunn 1914, p. 412).
123
first of four parts, the other two to be dedicated to astronomy proper. Ritter suggests
that they would have taken up the same material as later appeared in Ad Harmonicon
Coeleste (Ritter 1895, p. 37). It is unfinished works on the geometric foundations of
astronomy, then, that flank the treatises collected in the Opera Mathematica, and much
attention is paid in these intervening works to these geometric foundations. Chapter
XIX of Variorum, for example, is a 36-page guide to trigonometric tables, and many
of the other chapters of that work relate directly or indirectly to trigonometry. Chapter
X, on angular sections, begins with Viète’s stated desire to incorporate this theory into
a revised edition of the Canon Mathematicus (Viète 1593a, fol. 15a; 1646, p. 371).
Anderson, too, explains how the theorems on angular sections allow one to construct
trigonometric tables in increments of 1 .71 Viète’s other works are also saturated with
material relevant to trigonometry, whether treating triangles, continued proportions,
or the numerical solutions of equations.
In 1884 Maximilien Marie distinguished between positional and quantitative
aspects of geometry just before entering a discussion of Viète’s works. “The rela-
tions between the parts of the same [geometric] figure are either relations of position
or relations of size”.72 One of his examples is a right triangle, in which the positional
relationships of its sides show three angles, one of them right, while their relationship
in respect to size is that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the squares of the other
two sides. Relations of size are the concern of Greek computational geometry men-
tioned in Sect. 3.4, and as Marie notes, they are the object of Viète’s algebra.73 What
geometer interested in spatial relations would ask the question about sides and cubes
in the zetetic translated in Sect. 4.5? It is no surprise that all of Viète’s solutions in the
exegetic/rhetic stage are numerical. But even if he was mainly concerned with calcu-
lation, he recognized the value of construction, and noted that his logistice speciosa
could accommodate it. He left it to later mathematicians to follow that direction, as
Vaulezard and Ghetaldi did.
Viète’s approach to astronomical calculation was to ground all techniques in clas-
sical, non-arithmetized geometry, just as Ptolemy had done in the Almagest. Viète
regarded the algebra of his time as having been “spoiled and defiled by the barbarians”
because it was grounded instead in numerical calculation. Where another trigonometer
might have expressed the main theorem on angular sections numerically, Viète chose
to frame it geometrically, even if it meant working with dimensions greater than three.
This approach proved to be quite fruitful. For the trigonometer, solutions in logistice
speciosa are more efficient than solutions in logistice numerosa. As noted above, with
numerical algebra the givens must be chosen before constructing the equation, which
still requires simplification. In species the equation is set up and simplified once, and
the resulting equation or proportion is a formula for the repeated calculation of values
for different choices of the givens.
71 (Viète 1615a, p. 47; 1646, pp. 303–304). Antonio Garibaldi also mentions the connection between the
theorem on angular sections and Viète’s interest in astronomy (Garibaldi 1992, p. 168).
72 “Les relations entre les parties d’une même figure sont ou des relations de position ou des relations de
grandeurs” (Marie 1884, p. 3).
73 Marco Panza makes the same observation about the quantitative nature of Viète’s zetetics (Panza 2006,
p. 279; 2007, p. 115).
123
282 J. A. Oaks
5.3 Pappus, Diophantus, and the restoration of analysis
Just after the title page of the Isagoge Viète gave a list of his proposed mathematical
works that more or less corresponds to what was eventually published. These works
are grouped under the title “Opere restitutæ mathematicæ analyseos seu algebrâ novâ”.
The idea of his project as a restoration of mathematical analysis is briefly explained in
the opening paragraph of Isagoge, where he famously introduces Theon’s definition of
analysis and proposes his own three-fold modification that now includes the stage of
rhetics/exegetics. Viète’s sources for Greek analysis were “Theon, Apollonius, Pappus,
and others”,74 with Pappus’s exposition in Book VII of the Collection being the most
comprehensive.
Viète links his “new algebra” with Diophantus at the end of chapter V:
Diophantus used zetetics most subtly of all in those books that have been col-
lected in the Arithmetic. There he assuredly exhibits this method in numbers
but not in species, which he nevertheless used. Because of this his ingenuity
and quickness of mind are the more to be admired, for things that appear to be
very subtle and abstruse in numerical logistic are quite familiar and even easy
in species.75
It was through a study of Greek geometric analysis that Viète claims he was able to
recover the “incomparable gold” that Diophantus had deliberately hidden and that
had been “spoiled and defiled by the barbarians”. In the Zeteticorum Viète works out
over thirty problems taken from Diophantus’s Arithmetica, presumably in part to show
how Diophantus would have solved them in species. The Greek origin story for Viète’s
algebrâ novâ fits well with his humanistic leanings, but of course it was in reality his
own creation.
In the previous Sect. 5.2 I contended that Viète’s initial motivation for creating his
new algebra was to find better means of calculating astronomical tables. By the time
he began publishing his algebraic works in 1591 he understood that in the process he
had renovated mathematical analysis with a tool whose utility and theoretical interest
extended well beyond trigonometry and planetary models.
Marco Panza has analyzed Viète’s logistice speciosa from the perspective of math-
ematical analysis. He distinguishes between intra-configurational analysis, such as we
find in Pappus and which “relies on the constructive clauses of Euclid’s geometry” with
respect to a particular diagram, and trans-configurational analysis, which “relies on a
suitable formalism formed by language, consisting of both symbols for (known and
unknown) quantities and of symbols of operational relations between these quantities,
plus a number of rules of transformations of the formulas written in this language. The
74 “Theon, Apollonius, Papus, & alii. . .” (Viète 1600b, fol. 8b.7; 1646, p. 8).
75 “Zeteticem autem subtilissimè omnium exercuit Diophantus in iis libris qui de re Arithmeticâ conscripti
sunt. Eam verò tanquam per numeros, non etiam per species, quibus tamen usus est, institutam exhibuit,
quò sua esset magis admirationi subtilitas & solertia, quando quæ Logistæ numeroso subtiliora adparent,
& abstrusiora, ea utique specioso familiaria sunt & statim obvia.” (Viète 1591, fol. 8a.10; 1646, p. 10.6).
Translation modified from (Viète 1983, p. 27).
123
establishment of such a formalism is the main aim of Viète’s Isagoge” (Panza 2006,
p. 280).
Paolo Freguglia, on the other hand, sees the Zeteticorum as “the heart of the Viè-
tan program”,76 and the intent in that book is the “geometrization of algebra”. This
amounts to adopting the language of geometry in such a way that algebra gains a
foundation in the propositions in Book V of Euclid’s Elements (Freguglia 1989).
Astronomical calculation, the renovation of analysis, the grounding of algebra in Book
V are all important aspects of Viète’s new algebra. That one can legitimately identify
different major, “principal aims” is testimony to the depth and complexity of Viète’s
work.
5.4 Letters in geometry, algebra, and arithmetic before Viète
In Greek geometry magnitudes are usually designated by the letters labeling their
endpoints or vertices. But where only the relative size of a magnitude and not its
positional relationship with other magnitudes is relevant, it is usually labeled with
a single letter. Single-letter magnitudes, usually lines, can be found in most books
of Euclid’s Elements. In Proposition VI.17, for example, A, B, C, and D (in Heath’s
translation) each label lines. In this purely quantitative problem Euclid transitions from
equalities to proportions and back. One equality is stated as: “Therefore the rectangle
A, C is equal to the rectangle B, D. But the rectangle B, D is the square on B, for B is
equal to D . . .” (Euclid 1956 vol 2, p. 228) In Book V, on ratio and proportion, the lines
are of a different sort in that they represent magnitudes of undetermined dimension
(1, 2, or 3). They, too, are usually labeled with single letters.
Outside the context of algebra single letters had been used to designate numerical
values in mathematics since antiquity. In some works, like Books VII to IX of Euclid’s
Elements, the letters label lines that represent numbers. In other works there are no
lines showing, so the letters themselves apparently stand for the values. Examples can
be found in Pappus of Alexandria, Jordanus de Nemore (c. 1200), Fibonacci (1228), al-
Fārisı̄ (late 13th c.), Cardano (1545), Tartaglia (1556), Xylander (1575), and others.77
But unlike algebraic terms these letters are not subject to general operations. For
example, to multiply the number a by the number b Jordanus calls it by a new letter
c. (Jordanus will, however, use concatenation to mean the sum of two numbers, so ab
represents a and b together.)
Capital letters had been used in numerical algebra earlier in the sixteenth century
by various authors to designate independent unknowns (Heeffer 2010), but they are
always used in a premodern way as types and not values. For example, in Michael
Stifel the second, third, fourth, etc. unknowns are designated with “A”, “B”, “C”, etc.,
and as values he writes “1A”, “2B”, “1 13 C”, etc. Even Stifel’s notation for the products
76 “il cuore del ‘programma viètano’ ” (Freguglia 1989, p. 52).

77 Examples can be found in: Pappus, Book II of The Collection; Jordanus, throughout his De Numeris
Datis; Part 2 of Chapter 14 of Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci; many proofs in al-Fārisı̄’s Foundations of Rules on
Elements of Benefits; Tartaglia’s Part II Book VII; and Cardano’s Arte Magna. Some specific references:
(Fibonacci 1857, pp. 358–360, 376–377; 2002, pp. 497–499, 517; al-Fārisı̄ 1994, pp. 501–510; Tartaglia
1556, fol. 109b; Cardano 1545, fols 54b–55b).
123
284 J. A. Oaks
of these unknowns follows premodern concepts. Just as the cossic sign for the
sixth power is the product of the types and for the second and third powers, Stifel’s
composite sign indicates the type that is the product of the two types and A, and
the value of one of them is written as . The concatenation of the signs does not
mean the multiplication of values, otherwise multiplied by 1A would be .
Likewise, in Stevin’s notation the letter “M” indicates the multiplication of types, not
values (Stevin 1585, pp. 259–261; 428–429). The earliest use of concatenation for the
multiplication of values I have found is in Vaulezard’s 1630 translations of Viète’s
Isagoge and Zeteticorum. Concatenation appeared soon after in Thomas Harriot’s
1631 Artis Analyticae Praxis, William Oughtred’s 1631 Arithmeticæ in Numeris et
Speciebus Institutio, and in Descartes’s 1637 La Geometrie. All are indebted to Viète’s
algebra.
In some books letters designating numerical values are found in the same prob-
lem or proposition together with algebraic expressions and equations. This happens
already in al-Fārisı̄, but it is examples from Xylander and Gosselin that are relevant for
Viète. Xylander provided his own solutions to many of Diophantus’s problems in his
translation of the Arithmetica. In many problems, mainly in the second half of Book
I, a given number is divided into parts which Xylander calls A, B, etc. These values
are usually then named in terms of polynomials, which gives rise to an equation. In
Problem I.5, for example, A and B together make 100, and a third of A and a fifth
of B make 30. Xylander lets A be “1N”, so “30 − 13 N is a fifth of B”, which leads
to the equation “150 − 23 N || 100” (like our 150 − 23 x = 100) (Diophantus 1575, p.
14). These assignments read much like Viète’s shifts from species to numbers, but in
Xylander’s case the letters A and B play the role of phrases like “the first number”
and “the second number”.
Xylander is the first to my knowledge to take small steps in the direction of making
compound, “algebraic” expressions from these letters. At different points in Problem
I.5 he writes “ 13 A”, “ 15 B”, etc. for fractions of the letters. These are abbreviations for
rhetorical expressions, since in one place he spells it out as “ 15 ex B”. Then later, in
Problem III.5 (pp. 70–71), he writes “A + 4”, “C + 9”, “B + 10”, etc. to indicate the
numbers that are 4 more than A, 9 more than C, etc. In all other instances compound
expressions are formed only with values expressed with N, Q, and C.
Guillaume Gosselin took this a step further in his De Arte Magna (1577). In Book III
he proves the rules for solving the three composite equations in the context of specific
examples, and in each proof the letter A and sometimes B designate values. The first
example, on fol. 58a, begins: “Let 10L P 1Q equal 56 [like our 10x + x 2 = 56], &
the value of a side of this number be A.” He then expresses rhetorically operations on
the letter A, borrowing the “P” for plus from algebra. One example is his statement
“Quadratum 5 P A æquale erit Quadratis 5 & A & duplo facti ex 5 in A” for what we
would write as (5 + A)2 = 52 + A2 + 2 · 5 · A. Le Guillou-Kouteynikoff (Gosselin
2016, p. 195) attributes Gosselin’s inspiration for the use of letters in these proofs
to Xylander’s translation of Diophantus, so perhaps it was terms like “ 13 A” and “A
+ 4” that gave Gosselin the idea of subjecting them to operations. Xylander’s and
Gosselin’s manipulations of letters (as values) may resemble Viète’s manipulations
123
with species, but it is impossible to say just what, if any, influence the two of them
had on the development of the notation for logistice speciosa.
5.5 From equalities to equations
Viète’s species are magnitudes, as he himself says, and magnitudes in his century
were either lines, surfaces, or bodies. And like the single letters labeling magnitudes
in Greek geometry, Viète’s species designate only relative size, and not position or
orientation. So far this is reasonable circumstantial evidence that Viète was thinking of
single-letter Greek geometric magnitudes when he chose to represent his species with
capital letters. This hypothesis becomes more probable when we consider that Viète’s
choice of letters follows more or less the order of the Greek alphabet. He makes heavy
use of A, B, G, D, E, and Z, and nowhere does the letter C appear as a species in any
of his works.78 Even if his readers did not notice this detail, they would have found
the capital letters a familiar way of naming magnitudes. Viète was not building on the
premodern algebraic use of letters in Stifel and his successors, where the letters stand
for types. He was building mainly on the use of letters as values in Greek geometry,
perhaps inspired also by the ways that Xylander and Gosselin inched their way toward
making their (numerical) letters operational.
It is not surprising that neither Viète nor his contemporaries made note of the
switch from types to values in algebra. The real switch for them was from arithmetical
measures of magnitudes (represented by the types of premodern algebra) to the (relative
sizes of) magnitudes themselves, and for that Viète’s choice of letters to represent
them was neither novel nor noteworthy. What was new was the way Viète transformed
equalities into equations by substituting geometric with arithmetical language. I have
found three propositions that contain both geometric equalities and their versions in
species: Propositions XIIII and XV in Effectionum Geometricarum and Proposition
XVI in Supplementum Geometriæ. The first of these is the proposition with four-
dimensional magnitudes illustrated in Sect. 3.3. The geometric equality is written
as:
Quadrato-quadratum ex BC plus planoplano sub Quadrato ex AC
& Quadrato ex BC æquetur Quadrato-quadrato ex BD,
and the corresponding equation in species is:
A quadrato-quadratum, plùs B Quadrato in A Quadratum
æquetur D Quadrato-quadrato.
For the version in logistice speciosa the species A takes the place of line BC, B
replaces line AC, and D replaces line BD. Geometric language is used in the equality,
with “Quadrato ex AC” (“the square of AC”), and the preposition sub. For expressing
the equation in species Viète adopts arithmetical language, with “B quadrato” (“B
squared”) and the preposition in for multiplication.
78 The letter C is not avoided because it is used in logistice numerosa. Sometimes the letter N designates a
species, as in Proposition XLVII of Ad Logisticem Speciosam, Notæ Priores and in zetetics IV.4 and IV.5.
123
286 J. A. Oaks
The same change of language is evident in the example from Supplementum

Geometriæ (for the equation in species Viète supposes that AB = CE):
cubus ex AC minus triplo solido sub AC & quadrato ex AB,
æqualis est solido sub CE & quadrato ex AB
A cubus minùs Z quadrato ter in A æquatur Z cubo.79
The elements of traditional numerical algebra, or more specifically those of Xylan-

der’s Diophantus, that Viète appropriated for equations in species are (a) the series
of scalar terms extending beyond the third power (quadratum, cubus, quadrato-
quadratum, quadrato-cubus, etc.), and (b) the language of arithmetical operations.
The creation of logistice speciosa can be seen as a kind of algebrization of computa-
tional geometry in which equations take the place of equalities.
5.6 Comparing logistice numerosa with logistice speciosa
Premodern algebra is founded in types in both the rhetorical as well as notational forms
in which it is expressed. The Arabic “three things” (like Viète’s “3N”), for example,
is conceived much like “three fourths” or “three ducks”. The “three” is not a scalar
multiple, but tells how many “things” there are. This interpretation is suggested by
the grammatical formation of expressions and by the ways algebraists worked with
monomials and polynomials, especially by the facts that a “coefficient” of 1 is always
written and that irrational numbers were avoided as “coefficients”. The powers of
the unknown were given different names, and the gathering of multitudes of these
names to form polynomials was treated just like the gathering of incommensurable
numbers as binomials and apotomes. The result is that premodern polynomials are
expressed without operations of any kind. Where a modern polynomial like 30x 2 +
24x − x 3 is pieced together with the arithmetical operations of addition, subtraction,
scalar multiplication, and exponentiation, Viète’s version of this example in numerical
logistic, 30Q + 24N − 1C,80 is an aggregation of 54 items of two kinds (quadrata
and numeri) that have been diminished by one cube. The two sides of an equation in
premodern algebra are ideally polynomials which were viewed as static amounts that
are described using one or more name.
Although polynomials are not expressed with operations, they are necessarily sub-
ject to them. One can add, subtract, multiply, and divide polynomials and take their
roots. The first three operations always yield another polynomial, but this is not true
for divisions and roots. It was out of an uncomfortable convenience that some Ara-
bic algebraists allowed for divisions of polynomials in equations, but usually only
after pursuing a more traditional and more difficult solution. Divisions are much more
common in medieval Italian algebra, and are shown with the division bar. Roots of
polynomials appear occasionally in medieval Arabic, Latin, and Italian equations, too.
Division and roots remained a staple in sixteenth-century algebra, but this violation
79 (Viète 1593d, fol. 17b.-2; 1646, p. 249.-4).

80 From De Æquationum Emendatione (Viète 1615b, p. 122.17; 1646, p. 155.16).
123
of the semantics did not extend to other operations. Multiplications in particular will
not be found in premodern equations. And although not as apparent to the modern
reader, additions and subtractions are likewise absent. Instead, words meaning “and”
and “less”, and later, by the sixteenth century, plus and minus linked the terms together
(Oaks 2009, 2010, 2017).
Viète’s switch to a geometric foundation for his logistice speciosa caused a radical
reconception of polynomials. Now coefficients (knowns) and the unknowns they mod-
ify are both objects of the same kind—geometric magnitudes—that are necessarily
multiplied together. With the operation of multiplication at the heart of monomials,
the signs “+” and “−” that link the terms together could be reinterpreted as operations.
This is what Viète implies in Chapter VII of Isagoge when he writes that one either
solves the final equation numerically, or one constructs the magnitude itself. Exegetics
either way requires one to read the notation as giving instructions on how to operate
on knowns. And now that polynomials are built with operations, the door was open
to construct algebraic expressions that would have been difficult if not impossible in
numerical algebra. In a few places Viète took advantage of this possibility. He can now
raise a two-term expression to a power, as he does with “G − B cubo” for (G − B)3 ,
D quadr. − B quadr.
and he can construct more complex expressions like “ D in F + F + D, in B bis ”
−B )
2 2
for D·((F+D)
(F+D)·2B (Viète 1615b, p. 52.-5; 1646, pp. 40.7, 110.-8). But even with this
new, more powerful notation, expressions like these are rare in Viète’s works. He
still preferred to work with polynomials, possibly because he had devised rules for
extracting their roots numerically. Only later, beginning mainly with Descartes, would
algebraists begin to take fuller advantage of the possibilities that opened up with the
new notation.
Logistice speciosa did not improve the handling of polynomial equations. From the
practical perspective of solving problems there is little difference between the Latin
plus and minus (“more” and “less”) and the English “plus” and “minus” (arithmetical
operations). The ban on multiplications in equations was not much of a hindrance
either, because that operation can always be performed before setting up the equation.
For example, in one problem Michael Stifel wants the product of by (in
our notation x +6 by x −2) to equal 84. Instead of writing the equation (x +6)(x −2) =
84 as we might, he first performs the multiplication and then equates the result to 84:
“ æquantur 84” (Stifel 1544, fol. 277a).
Nor was switching to values necessary for the introduction of undetermined knowns.
That could have been achieved by imitating the notation of Michel Stifel’s independent
unknowns, for example. In place of Viète’s equation “A cubus minùs Z quadrato ter
in A æquatur Z cubo” (quoted in Sect. 5.5), one could shown it as “
æquatur ”, or maybe “1Ac minùs 3ZqA æquetur 1Zc” to distance it a little from
the cossic signs. (See (Stifel 1544, fols. 251bff) for an explanation of this notation.)
In this hypothetical scheme the composite signs Ac, Zc, and ZqA are still types.
So Viète introduced two independent innovations with his new algebra: with values
replacing types, expressions are no longer aggregations but are built from operations,
and knowns (consonants) are now undetermined. It is the first that became possible
with logistice speciosa, but it is the second that Viète exploited with vigor.
123
288 J. A. Oaks
5.7 Geometric interpretations in other authors
Some mathematicians before Viète had nominally given algebra a geometric foun-
dation, but their powers remain homogeneous and their geometric examples never
venture beyond the third dimension. Borrel (1559) calls his numbers “geometric quan-
tities”81 and he associates the first three powers with lines, squares, and cubes. Because
his magnitudes possess numerical measure, in practice his algebra is identical to the
numerical algebra of his time, but restricted to the first three degrees (Borrel 1559, pp.
120, 123).
In the beginning of his 1585 l’Arithmetique Simon Stevin calls ordinary num-
bers nombres Arithmetique, and he calls numbers in geometric progression nombres
Geometriques. In the latter the first power of a number is compared with a line, the
second power with a square, and the third power with a cube. For higher powers he
simply attaches cubes together. The fourth power of 2 is shown as two cubes of side 2,
one stacked on the other; the fifth power is four stacked cubes, etc. Later, in the third
part of the book where he takes up algebra, the connection to geometry is repeated: the
first, second, and third powers are shown as a line, a square, and a cube, respectively,
and the higher powers are again stacked cubes. Rather than maintain that the powers of
numbers are geometric magnitudes, it seems that Stevin gave readers an intuitive way
of thinking about them. Like Borrel’s, Stevin’s powers are homogeneous by virtue of
the existence of a unit (Stevin 1585, pp. 10ff, 228ff).
5.8 Al-Khayyām and Viète
The Persian geometer Umar al-Khayyām (ca. 1048-ca. 1131) shared about as com-
mon a view of the relationship between algebra and geometry as could two people
working centuries apart in different cultures. Like Viète, al-Khayyām saw that the
practical, numerical algebra of his time could be a valuable tool in Greek-style geo-
metric problem-solving. Both, too, held the view that the numbers of the algebraists,
which include fractions and irrationals, are the measures of continuous magnitudes.
Although sixteenth-century European algebraists found non-integral numbers to
be useful in geometry, neither Viète nor any of his contemporaries presented any
argument to justify them. Al-Khayyām, instead, gave a philosophical foundation for
positive non-integral numbers through an Aristotelian-style abstraction (Oaks 2011).
For him the powers of the numerical unknown in algebra are “abstracted in the mind
from sensible things”,82 where these “sensible things” are lines, planes, and bodies.
The powers are proportional, and thus homogeneous: “the ratio of the number to the
roots is as the ratio of the roots to the māls, and as the māls to the cubes, and as the
ratio of the cubes to the māls māls, as far as one wishes to go”.83 With this foundation
in continuous
√ magnitudes the unit in this alternate arithmetic is divisible. So a number
like 4 58 or 12 can be the length of a line, the area of a surface, or the volume of a body.
81 “...quantitates Geometricas” (Borrel 1559, p. 120).

82 Translated in (Oaks 2011, p. 61).
83 Translated in (Oaks 2011, p. 61).
123
Al-Khayyām’s continuous numbers are identical to Viète’s numbers in every important

way. They derive their existence as the measures of geometric magnitudes, and they
include any positive quantity that can arise in geometric calculation. So al-Khayyām’s
algebra corresponds nicely with Viète’s logistice numerosa.
Al-Khayyām did not attempt to create an algebra for non-arithmetized magnitudes
like Viète did. Instead, he looked in a different direction and wrote that algebra can
also be used to solve problems in the arithmetic of discrete numbers. He did not apply
his algebra to solve any such problems, and it is doubtful that algebra ever became a
tool for theoretical logistic. But his observation makes for an interesting comparison
between his program and Viète’s. Viète worked with two algebras, both belonging to
geometry: logistice numerosa is an algebra for the numerical measures of geometric
magnitudes, and logistice speciosa is an algebra for the relative sizes of the magnitudes
themselves. Al-Khayyām worked with a single algebra that could be applied to two
domains: geometric magnitudes and discrete numbers, both of which are represented
by continuous numbers in the course of algebraic manipulations. So where Viète has
two algebras for one kind of object (geometric magnitudes), al-Khayyām has one
algebra for two kinds of object (magnitudes and discrete numbers). But this does not
make al-Khayyām’s system abstract in the way Klein understood Viète’s algebra to be
(see, Sect. 6.2). Instead, most likely al-Khayyām considered his continuous numbers
to be able to represent both magnitudes and discrete numbers.
6 The views of historians
6.1 Historians before Klein
Jean-Étienne Montucla wrote of Viète in his 1758 Histoire des Mathematiques: “There
are few mathematicians to whom this science owes more than this illustrious man.”84
Montucla is in agreement with the general consensus of mathematicians and historians
since the seventeenth century that Viète’s main contribution to algebra was to “have
established the use of letters to designate not only unknown quantities, but even those
that are known”.85 Because of this, “[a]nother advantage, more estimable still, is the
ease with which it penetrates into the nature and composition of equations”.86 Viète
was not without detractors, however. Historians D. Pietro Cossali (contra Montucla)
and Guglielmo Libri (who was later criticized by Michel Chasles) attempted to down-
grade Viète’s importance by citing earlier authors who had represented numbers with
letters, such as Fibonacci, Jordanus, and Cardano, but they do not address the fact that
those authors did not operate on their letters.
While the introduction of literal coefficients is indeed a major development, no one
who has investigated Viète’s works has identified the shift in notation from types to
84 “Il e st peu de mathématiciens à qui cette science doive plus qu’à cet homme illustre” (Montucla 1758,
p. 488).
85 “M. Viete d’avoir établi l’usage des lettres pour désigner non seulement les quantités inconnues, mais
même celles qui sont connues.” (Montucla 1758, p. 488).
86 “Un autre avantage plus estimable encore, est la facilité qu’elle procure de pénétrer dans la nature & la
composition des équations” (Montucla 1758, p. 489).
123
290 J. A. Oaks
values and the associated incorporation of operations into equations. It seems that by
the time cossic algebra finally disappeared around the start of the eighteenth century,
all memory of how the old notations functioned was forgotten. Since then readers
of the books of Cardano, Peletier, Stevin, etc. have interpreted their notations with a
modern eye.
The geometric foundation of Viète’s logistice speciosa was only rarely noted. One
historian who pointed it out is Maximilien Marie, who wrote in 1884: “The question,
as Viète put it, was to introduce the magnitudes themselves in their concrete form into
algebraic equations”.87 Marie mentions how Viète was not bound to three dimensions,
but continued into “sursolides, plans-plans, plans-solides, etc.” (Marie 1884, p. 7). The
only evidence he provides for this interpretation is Viète’s use of the geometric terms
ducere and adplicare for multiplication and division. Moritz Cantor, too, maintained
of Viète’s species that “[t]hey are magnitudes, not numbers”,88 citing again the use of
ducere and adplicare (Cantor 1900, p. 631). These are the only two historians I have
found who acknowledge the geometric foundation of logistice speciosa.
6.2 Jacob Klein’s interpretation
The only serious study of the nature of Viète’s species was undertaken by Jacob
Klein. It appeared in the second part of his two-part article “Die griechische Logistik
und die Entstehung der Algebra”, published in Otto Neugebauer’s journal Quellen un
Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik Astronomie und Physic in 1934 and 1936. The
article went largely unnoticed by historians of mathematics until 1968, when the two
parts were published together in English translation as the book Greek Mathematical
Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Klein 1936, 1968). Since that time Klein’s “math
book” has remained important—and difficult—reading for anyone interested in history
of algebra, or indeed in history of premodern mathematics generally.
Klein’s ultimate goal was to account for the gulf between modern mathematical
physics, whose content had become inseparable from the formal mathematical lan-
guage that expresses it, and our actual experience of the physical world. So he set
himself “the task of inquiring into the origin and conceptual structure of this formal
language.” He found that “[t]he creation of the formal language of mathematics is
identical with the foundation of modern algebra.” (Klein 1968, p. 4). Modern alge-
bra, he relates, originated in the late sixteenth century with the modifications made to
Diophantus’s algebra at the hands of François Viète. And algebra, we learn, is merely
the context in which the truly radical change took place: that of the concept of number
itself.
Klein’s approach was to articulate the Greek concept of number via the study
of mainly philosophical works, and to explain how this concept was reformulated by
Viète through the rules governing the species of his new algebra. Very briefly, a number
87 “La question, telle que se la posa Viète, était d’introduire les grandeurs elles-mêmes, sous leur formes
concrète, dans les équations algébriques” (Marie 1884, p. 6).
88 “Es sind Grössen, nicht Zahlen”.
123
for ancient Greeks was conceived as “a definite amount of definite objects”,89 which
is necessarily a positive integer, while modern numbers, beginning with Viète, are
defined via axioms. So where numbers were once characterized by their being, they
are now defined according to the operational relationships they have with one another.
This new way of characterizing them gives legitimacy to non-integral numbers: not
just fractions and irrationals, but also the negative and complex numbers that had been
introduced in Viète’s century.
Klein asked the right question in the second part of his article: “What does Vieta
understand by the species which form the object of the “general analytic” and in
which way does he understand them?”90 His answer is outlined in Sect. 2, covering
pages 163–178 of the translation. Viète’s species, he says, are “the objects of a ‘gen-
eralized’ mathematical discipline that is identifiable neither with geometry nor with
arithmetic”.91 Said in a different way, “zetetic analysis includes the ‘general’ analytic
art which transcends the opposition of ‘geometry’ and ‘arithmetic’ and is therefore
superior in rank to the Diophantine Arithmetic.” (Klein 1968, p. 179). The species “A”,
“B quadratum”, “D solidum”, etc. with which one works in the zetetic stage belong to
neither branch of mathematics. Only in the stage of rhetics/exegetics are the species
(re-)interpreted as either numbers or geometric magnitudes, and the desired solution
can be found. The species, then, must be symbolic:
The ‘being’ of the species in Vieta, i.e., the ‘being’ of the objects of the ‘general
analytic,’ is to be understood [. . .] as symbolic. The species are in themselves
symbolic formations — namely formations whose merely possible objectivity is
understood as an actual objectivity. They are, therefore, comprehensible only
within the language of symbolic formalism [. . .]92
In Klein’s view Viète’s rules for operating on his abstract species, which are modeled
in imitation of operations on numbers, function as axioms:
But the possibility of being able to see a ‘number’ in the isolated letter signs ‘A’ or
‘B’ is, however, obviously possible only through the syntactical rules which Vieta
gives, in the fourth chapter of the Isagoge, in contrast to the operating rules of
the ‘logistice numerosa’. These rules therefore represent the first modern axiom
system; their systematic connection is what initially ‘defines’ the object to which
they refer.93
The species “are, therefore, comprehensible only within the language of symbolic
formalism” (Klein 1968, p. 175). He frames this idea in terms of intentionality: “the
letter sign designates the intentional object of a “second intention” (intendio secunda),
namely a concept which itself directly means another concept and not a being.”94
89 (Klein 1968, p. 7), translation adjusted in (Hopkins 2011, p. 96).

90 (Klein 1968, p. 171). Emphases in quotations from Klein are all his.
93 (Klein 1968, p. 176), translation adjusted in (Hopkins 2011, pp. 288, 289).
123
292 J. A. Oaks
Where the intentional object of, say, 1 arithmos in Diophantus is an indeterminate

(in the sense that it is not yet known) number, and the intentional object of the line
AB drawn in a proposition of Euclid is a line, the intentional object of Viète’s “A”
is the (newly formed) concept of number, or “amount in general”, which derives its
“being” from the axioms. These axioms are designed in such a way that they satisfy the
calculational properties of both numbers and magnitudes, allowing for reinterpretation
in rhetics/exegetics for obtaining a numerical or geometric solution.
Klein sums it up by saying “As soon as the ‘amount in general’ [‘allgemeine
Anzahl’] is conceived and presented in the medium of the species as an objective
formation in itself, that is, symbolically, the modern concept of ‘number’ is born.”95
6.3 Klein’s oversight
It is understandable that Klein saw the rules governing Viète’s species as being axioms
for objects belonging neither to arithmetic nor to geometry. The presence of the dimen-
sional scale of magnitudes would be unnecessary if the species were numbers, and
because it extends in an unlimited way beyond the third dimension, the species cannot
be identified with traditional geometric magnitudes either. Klein may not have noticed
the four-dimensional magnitudes in the two propositions in Effectionum Geometri-
carum, in which case he might have paid little attention to Viète’s slightly obscurely
worded “proportions above triplicate [. . .] ratio” in Chapter VIII of Isagoge. And if he
noticed Alexander Anderson’s four- and five-dimensional magnitudes in Ad Angular-
ium Sectionum Analyticen he may have regarded them as already being some kind of
abstract construction made possible in the wake of Viète’s new ideas.
Whatever he may or may not have noticed, Klein gives no indication that he was
aware of Viète’s higher-dimensional geometric magnitudes. Once these magnitudes
are taken into account, and once we have taken a close look at how Viète describes
his species, it becomes clear that the rules in Chapter IIII are not axioms defining “the
object to which they refer”. They are instead an extension to higher dimensions of the
well-established rules for operating on lines, planes, and bodies. The “being” of these
magnitudes is not even a point to be addressed. Viète works with them simply because
they are useful.
Viète’s extension of the operational rules to higher dimensions, together with his
stipulation that proportions involving magnitudes of any dimension can be resolved
into equations and vice-versa, was all he needed to create his geometric algebra. These
aspects of logistice speciosa can be called to some degree axiomatic, but they fall
short of putting Viète’s creation on par with modern abstract mathematics. Viète did
not create the modern axiom system. His innovation lay within the realm of geometry
itself.
There are other historical problems with Klein’s arguments, starting with the fact
that he acknowledges only two concepts of number across all of history. Only his
lack of access to many, many more texts (he wrote too early—the 1930’s) kept him
from having to confront fractions and irrational numbers across medieval Arabic,
95 (Klein 1968, p. 175), translation adjusted in (Hopkins 2011, pp. 255–256); (Klein 1936, p. 183).
123
Latin, and Italian mathematics. But this is not to say that the whole thrust of his
article is wrong. There is a fundamental difference in the way Diophantus conceived
of numbers and the way we conceive of them today, and he expressed this difference
well in terms of intentionality. Klein’s great contribution to our field is that he was the
first to articulate in a prominent publication the idea that people in different cultures
can conceive of mathematical objects differently, and he did so at a time when such
an idea ran contrary to the thrust of research in history of mathematics. It was only in
the 1970’s, under the influence of Klein, Árpád Szabó, and Thomas Kuhn, that figures
like Michael Mahoney and Sabetai Unguru could finally initiate a shift toward more
historiographically responsible research in history of mathematics (Schneider 2016).
6.4 Historians since Klein
Klein’s portrayal of the species as abstract formations is expertly argued, philosophi-

cally profound, and in the English translation difficult to decipher. No study of Viète’s
species has appeared since, so Klein’s has remained the standard, if not universally
accepted, interpretation. Many historians still subscribe to Klein’s view, like Henk
Bos, who devotes a chapter of his 2001 Redefining Geometrical Exactness to situating
Viète’s achievements in light of Klein’s account.96 Others books and articles adopt-
ing Klein’s thesis, sometimes without mentioning his name, include (Mahoney 1980),
(di Stefano 1992), (Mahoney 1994, pp. 35–36), (Bos 1996, pp. 189–192), (Macbeth
2004), (Charbonneau 2006), (Cantù 2010), and (Massa Esteve 2012).
Other historians have found reason to criticize Klein. Fraser (1997), for example,
notes two problems, the first having to do with chronology. On the one hand Klein
maintained that it is with Viète that “the modern concept of ‘number’ is born” (Klein
1968, p. 175), but on the other he acknowledged the non-integral numbers in the
works of earlier mathematicians. To account for this discrepancy Klein claimed that
“[t]he new ‘number’ concept [. . .] already controlled, although not explicitly, the
algebraic expositions and investigations of Stifel, Cardano, Tartaglia, etc.” (Klein
1968, p. 178). Fraser rightly points out that even if mathematicians had not given
non-integral numbers a foundation in axioms before Viète (in truth this foundation
came only in the nineteenth century, not with Viète), “[s]elf-consciousness on the part
of researchers, however significant, is not necessary in order for important conceptual
advances to take place” (Fraser 1997, p. 49).
Fraser’s other criticism, however, stems from a misunderstanding of Klein’s thesis.
Fraser writes: “[Viète’s] vision of a general theory of quantity applicable to either
number or line segments was already realized in Elements V, a part of the Euclidean
canon that he drew upon in chapter 2 of his Analytic Art.” (Fraser 1997, p. 49). Klein
is clear that what is new in Viète is the creation of the symbolic objects of this general
theory of quantity, which is a step beyond the acknowledgment by Greek writers
that propositions relating to ratio and proportion are applicable to both numbers and
magnitudes.
96 Chapter 8 in (Bos 2001).
123
294 J. A. Oaks
Antoni Malet also criticizes Klein with regard to chronology, citing Klein’s attri-
bution of the new number concept to Stevin, who published his L’Arithmetique six
years prior to the appearance of Viète’s Isagoge. Malet goes no further into the issue,
and only briefly mentions some possible philosophical explanations as to why Klein
erred (Malet 2006, p. 66).
Some historians have hinted at variations on Klein’s idea. Paolo Freguglia interprets
“zetetic reduction” as “in the last analysis attributable to the theory of proportion,
namely, keeping in mind Book V of the Euclidean Elements, in a more abstract form
of classical geometry.”97 He states that “the letters (which express not only unknowns)
are susceptible to different interpretations”,98 but he does not explain further.
Marco Panza regards Viète’s letters as being general objects that can represent
geometric magnitudes or numbers. Instead of being abstract entities that transcend the
two realms, they function as signs that can stand for elements of either one. “[T]he
formalism that is used in Viète’s analysis is not defined on specific kinds of quantities,
but rather on quantities taken in general. Such a definition depends on an axiomatic
characterization of the operational relations between these quantities that is advanced
in Chapter II of the Isagoge”.99
Enrico Giusti, too, seems to see Viète’s letters as standing for either numbers or
magnitudes: “But the letters do not limit themselves to substitute and to defer to
numbers; they also denote geometric magnitudes: lines, planes, solids”.100 But this
next quotation seems to deviate from both Klein and Panza: “the letters come to assume
an intermediate position between numbers and magnitudes, thus breaking the direct
link that had determined the separation between algebra and geometry, and instead
establishing a complex relationship which passes through the medium of the literal
representation”.101 Because Freguglia, Panza, and Giusti do not present their ideas in
more detail, it is not possible to analyze them further.
Serfati (2005, 2010) has investigated the origin and constitution of symbolic algebra
from the perspective of its structure as an artificial language. Overall this way of
approaching the history of algebra through the syntax of the notation has much to
commend it. In some way it complements the present study, which focuses more
on semantics. Because the underlying “being” of the symbols used by algebraists is
of secondary importance in Serfati’s study, the fact that he considers, without any
explicit pronouncement, that the letters in Viète’s logistice speciosa are numbers does
97 “...in ultima analisi ricondursi alla teoria delle proporzioni, cioè, tenendo presente il libro V degli
Elementi euclidei, alla forma più astratta della geometria classica” (Freguglia 1989, p. 53).
98 “le lettere (che non esprimono solo incognite) sono suscettibili di varie interpretazioni.” (Freguglia 1989,
p. 51).
99 (Panza 2006, p. 280). He expresses these ideas also in (Panza 2005, pp. 19ff).
100 “Ma le lettere non si limitano a sostituire e a rinviare ai numeri; esse denotano anche delle grandezze
geometriche: linee, piani, solidi” (Giusti 1990, p. 425).
101 “. . .le lettere vengono ad assumere una posizione intermedia tra numeri e grandezze, spezzando cosí
quel legame diretto che aveva determinato la separazione tra l’algebra e la geometria, ed instaurando invece
un rapporto complesso, che passa attraverso il tramite della rappresentazione letterale” (Giusti 1990, p.
425).
123
not affect his arguments much.102 After all, some seventeenth-century algebraists read
the species as being numbers in their own modifications of Viète’s algebra, such as
we already find in Thomas Harriot’s 1631 Artis Analyticae Praxis.
Serfati has organized his study around a sequence of six “patterns” in the devel-
opment of algebraic symbolism, from “[t]he representation of the unknown” to “[t]he
representation of compound concepts” (Serfati 2005, pp. 29–30; 2010, pp. 106–108).
He credits Viète with making the breakthrough in the second pattern, which he calls
“[t]he dialectic of indeterminancy”. This concerns Viète’s representation of arbitrary
given values with letters (Serfati 2005, Chapter VII; 2010, §3.3). For Serfati Viète’s
consonants are not merely an efficient way to see the structure of the solution to an
equation. Viète had to overcome a serious epistemological dilemma to introduce them.
Serfati notes that “since Antiquity, geometrical figures had been considered ‘arbi-
trary’, i.e., generic or emblematic of some given geometrical situation”, but before
Viète “[t]here was no comparable representation of arbitrary numbers.” (Serfati 2010,
p. 109)
Serfati identifies an apparent contradiction in Viète’s notion of “given”, for it com-
bines “two concepts hitherto considered as opposites, the arbitrary and the fixed, or
the one and the multiple or even, maybe more significantly, the unspecified and the
singular.” (Serfati 2010, p. 109; 2005, p. 145) He explains that
in any calculation considered valid at that time, the ‘given’ was just what could
be explicitly represented by numbers. Saying, as Vieta did, that the consonant B
represented a given magnitude, meant that the author of the text knew its value.
But, as thus represented, the reader had no knowledge of it! How could Vieta
call B the sign of a given? Objections to such a conception of knowledge and
representation cannot be overlooked. . . (Serfati 2010, p. 109)
Although there may have been a notion in Viète’s time that given numbers are
truly given (I have found no discussions on this), it would have been more a matter
of practice than a philosophical principle. In fact, Serfati provides no textual evi-
dence that anyone before the twentieth century recognized the contradiction, and he
acknowledges that Viète’s notation was “[i]mmediately accepted by the mathematical
community” (Serfati 2010, p. 110). And yet “[t]hese objections to Vieta’s symbolism
were actually considerable epistemological obstacles, so that many centuries were
needed to understand and (in some way) go beyond them.” (Serfati 2010, p. 109)
More problematic than the idea of Viète solving a problem nobody was aware
of is the fact that letters, unaccompanied by lines, had been used to represent arbi-
trary given numbers by mathematicians stretching back at least to late antiquity.
Take for example this quotation of Ver Eecke’s translation from Book II of Pappus’s
Collection: “Proposition 20.—Mais, soient trois nombres A, B, , et que chacun
d’eux soit plus petit que 100 et divisible par 10 [. . .]”103 Jordanus de Nemore’s
De Numeris Datis (ca. early thirteenth century) is a prominent medieval example
102 Passages where the species are identified with numbers can be found in (Serfati 2005, pp. 158.10,
159.4, 159.12), and the whole discussion of Viète’s innovation is set against the representation of givens in
geometry.
103 (Pappus 1982, p. 7). He follows up the proposition with a numerical example.
123
296 J. A. Oaks
full of letters standing for undetermined given numbers. Here is the beginning of
problem I.6:
If the difference of two parts of a number is known and also the sum of their
squares, then the number can be found.
Subtract from b, the given sum of the squares, h, the square of their given
difference. Call the remainder e, which is also twice the product of the parts.
The sum of e and b is the square of the desired number, f . Hence, take its root
to find the number.104
The same epistemological obstacles that Viète faced and solved should also apply
to Pappus, Jordanus, and many others who designated given numbers with let-
ters before 1591. I suggest that the flaw in Serfati’s analysis is his presumption
that mathematicians before the twentieth century held to a philosophical principle
regarding the “given” that in fact only came into being in the time of Lebesge
and Zermelo. Neither Viète nor any of the other mathematicians cited in this arti-
cle would have insisted that the author of a text knew the value of his givens.
Viète, in particular, would not have claimed to know the value of his B if only for
the fact that the letter would be assigned many different values in trigonometric
calculation.
Albrecht Heeffer has also produced a list of six items in his analysis of the emergence
of symbolic writing, which for him took place mainly in the sixteenth century. Instead
of patterns, Heeffer identifies six stages of development. The fifth stage is “Introduction
of letters for multiple unknowns”. He writes: “The use of letters to represent multiple
unknowns was not an invention by Viète but originated in a book by Stifel (1544,
f. 252r). Stifel uses the letters A, B, and C and also proposes a notation for the
powers and products of unknowns.” (Heeffer 2008, p. 154) Heeffer is right about
this. But he has missed two important points that differentiate the notations of the
two mathematicians. First, Stifel’s and Viète’s algebras are not about the same kinds
of object (they are numbers in Stifel and magnitudes in Viète), and second, Stifel’s
and Viète’s letters do not function the same way. Stifel’s are kinds, while Viète’s are
values (see Sect. 4.1). Because of this, Heeffer missed what is revolutionary in Viète’s
logistice speciosa.
7 Summary
Viète’s initial goal in his mathematical work was the development and improvement
of geometric models for calculations in planetary astronomy. Delambre gave the right
perspective when he wrote in his 1819 Histoire de l’Astronomie du Moyen Age that
Viète “was not an astronomer, but he was the greatest geometer of his time”.105 Like
Ptolemy, Viète considered geometry to provide the theoretical foundation for astro-
nomical calculations, and through his trigonometric investigations he found a way
104 Translated in (Jordanus de Nemore 1981, p. 129). Again, a numerical example follows. This is the same
problem as Viète’s zetetic II.5.
105 “n’était pas astronome, mais il était le plus grand géomètre de son temps” (Delambre 1819, p. 455).
123
to create an algebra for geometry that surpasses traditional numerical algebra in its
flexibility, generality, and utility. In the process of creating this new algebra Viète
gave algebra a grounding in Euclid’s Elements (Freguglia), and he renovated geo-
metric analysis through the algebrization of the transformational rules of Euclidean
geometry (Panza).
Viète’s logistice speciosa is not at incremental step in the direction of modern
algebra, but rests on an entirely different foundation than the algebra that preceded it.
In pre-Viètan algebra stretching back to the earliest texts the knowns and unknowns
are positive rational and (usually) irrational numbers. Viète’s knowns and unknowns
are instead non-arithmetized geometric magnitudes of any positive integer dimension.
There is no unit, multiplication always yields a magnitude of dimension greater than
the multipliers, and square roots can be taken only of even-dimensional of terms. Still,
the similarities between arithmetical and geometric operations are strong enough to
allow Viète to model his new geometric algebra on the old numerical algebra.
With this new foundation came an entirely new notation. Viète’s letters stand not
only for unknown magnitudes, but for known ones as well. For the first time the struc-
ture of solutions can be seen in a simplified equation through the operational relations
of the known magnitudes. To paraphrase Ritter, this final equation is a formula, and
if one wants to solve the same problem with different knowns (as in trigonometry), it
suffices to substitute them into this formula to obtain the answer immediately.106
What has not been noticed before is that Viète’s letters designate values, not types
as they did in premodern algebra. For Michael Stifel the letter “A” is a type of number,
and “1A” stands for the numerical value of one of this type. By contrast Viète’s “A”,
like the single “A” that labels a line in Euclid’s geometry, designates the (relative) size
of an unknown line. This important difference renders the two notations incompati-
ble. Numerical algebra is at its core grounded in polynomials as aggregations, with
no operations present. Division and roots had been added in Arabic times, division
became more prevalent in medieval Italian, and later algebraists like Stifel and Stevin
proposed notations for the multiplication of types (not values) to partially address the
lack of that operation. But these are all patches to a system rooted in the idea of an
algebraic expression as a collection of the different kinds of “number” (power). Viète’s
expressions, by contrast, are assembled with operations on letters that represent values.
They are the outcome of the reformulation of geometric equalities using arithmetical
operations, and in a setting independent of any diagram. And even if he was still think-
ing mainly in terms of polynomial algebra, his new notation could handle a variety of
algebraic expressions that would have been difficult at best in traditional algebra.
Viète is the first mathematician to my knowledge to take geometry beyond the
third dimension. He discovered that higher-dimensional geometric magnitudes arise
naturally in proportions involving the ratios of sides of triangles in sectioning angles,
and he could overlook the fact that these magnitudes have no perceptible existence
in our Euclidean three-dimensional universe because they give correct results when
106 “il créa l’Algèbre nouvelle, en représentant tous les éléments d’une question, connus ou inconnus, par
des lettres de l’alphabet, les opérations à effectuer sur elles par des signes et enfin le résultat par une formule,
dans laquelle il suffisait, si la même question était posée avec des données différentes, de les substituer pour
obtenir immédiatement le nouveau résultat demandé” (Ritter 1895, p. 21).
123
298 J. A. Oaks
reinterpreted as numbers in calculation. Like irrational numbers in geometry, they are

useful. Viète solved the other problems of creating an algebra for geometry by freeing
these magnitudes from their ratios by postulating that all proportions can be resolved
into equations (and vice-versa), and by giving his general coefficients dimension to
ensure that the terms in an equation are homogeneous. Where Borrel and Stevin thought
of the numbers (powers) of the algebraists as magnitudes, Viète thought of magnitudes
as if they were numbers.
Jacob Klein and others have seen in logistice speciosa a dual nature, in which the
species can be interpreted as geometric magnitudes or as numbers. In fact this duality
belongs to geometric magnitudes themselves. There are two ways that the magnitudes
of sixteenth-century geometers participate in Aristotle’s category of quantity: through
ratio and proportion, as we read in Euclid, and arithmetically, when numbers are
assigned to the magnitudes.
Viète’s higher-dimensional magnitudes and heterogeneous powers would prove to
be short lived. Descartes, in his 1637 La Geometrie, turned Viète’s logistice speciosa
into a more practical algebra that does not surpass the third dimension. He returned
numbers to algebra while retaining its geometric foundation by “taking one line which
I shall call unity in order to relate it as closely as possible to numbers, and which
can in general be chosen arbitrarily”.107 By assuming an inherent arithmetization of
magnitudes he could define the multiplication of two lines as yielding another line.
Now, with homogeneous powers, he could dispense with the law of homogeneity and
with it Viète’s magnitudes of dimension greater than three. This adjustment, together
with his version of the notation, was critical for the emerging algebraic geometry and
subsequent applications that no one at the time could envision.
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Arch. Hist. Exact Sci.

François Viète’s revolution in algebra

Received: 21 June 2017 / Published online: 16 April 2018

Abstract Françios Viète (1540–1603) was a geometer in search of better techniques

Communicated by: Niccolò Guicciardini.

1 Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Indianapolis, 1400 E. Hanna Ave.,

one-dimensional, “B planum” and “D planum” if they are two-dimensional, etc. The

1.1 Viète’s works

2 (Freguglia 2008a, p. 53) dates the composition to before 1593.

De Æquationum Recognitione et Emendatione Tractatus Duo (consisting of

And finally Viète’s astronomical manuscript Ad Harmonicon Coeleste Libri Quinque

1.2 Preliminary remarks

To distinguish between the equating of geometric magnitudes and the equating of

2 Arithmetical and geometric language in the sixteenth century

2.2 The Latin plus and minus

The second aspect of wording in sixteenth-century mathematics concerns the different

One example from Borrel’s book is the polynomial (Borrel 1559,

2.3 The meanings of the terms magnitudo and numerus

3 Magnitudes and numbers in Viète

3.1 Viète’s arithmetical language in Universalium Inspectionum

We are now in a position to inspect the wording of propositions in Viète’s Univer-

3.2 Viète post-1590: a return to geometric language

Fig. 1 The diagram from

3.3 Four-dimensional magnitudes and the “supreme stipulation”

26 Translation adapted from (Klein 1968, p. 324).

3.4 Greek computational geometry

3.5 Angular sections and numerical calculation

cos(a + b) = cos(a) cos(b) − sin(a) sin(b)

cos(4θ ) = cos4 (θ ) − 6 cos2 (θ ) sin2 (θ ) + sin4 (θ )

Viète’s main theorem is Theorem III in Ad Problema and Ad Angularium Sectionum

Fig. 3 Reconstructed diagram

3.6 The usefulness of higher-dimensional magnitudes

We can now interpret Viète’s remarks on higher-dimensional magnitudes in Chapter

We should first explain the connection of higher-dimensional magnitudes with

in both Variorum and Ad Problema, and Anderson repeats them in Ad Angularium

3.7 Arithmetizations before 1591

One important feature of Viète’s geometry that was commonplace in sixteenth-century

36 (Pappus 2010, p. 125).

3.8 Arithmetizations in Viète’s works since 1591

Like the sixteenth-century scholiasts, Viète sometimes concludes his geometric

Viète sometimes works the numerical calculations in his examples in logistice

3.9 Summary of Viète’s magnitudes and numbers

4 Logistice numerosa and logistice speciosa

4.1 Introduction to the two notations

A cubus + B3 in A quad. − D plano in A, æquetur Z solido.

In the original 1615 printing it is shown as45

(Witmer translates this as “A3 + 3B A2 − D P A = Z S ” (Viète 1983, p. 243)).

No equation in logistice numerosa contains literal coefficients, and numbers do not

4.2 What are these letters?

4.4 Creating an algebra for geometry

4.5 Anatomy of the solutions of problems

64 “Datâ summâ laterum & summâ Cuborum distinguere latera”.

5 Viète’s algebra nova in various contexts

5.1 Impossible objects

numbers at all. To wit, when we seek to subject them to numeration [. . .] we

5.2 Trigonometry and numerical calculation

5.3 Pappus, Diophantus, and the restoration of analysis

5.4 Letters in geometry, algebra, and arithmetic before Viète

76 “il cuore del ‘programma viètano’ ” (Freguglia 1989, p. 52).

5.5 From equalities to equations

The same change of language is evident in the example from Supplementum

A cubus minùs Z quadrato ter in A æquatur Z cubo.79

The elements of traditional numerical algebra, or more specifically those of Xylan-

5.6 Comparing logistice numerosa with logistice speciosa