Archimedes explicitly valued mathematical research over his famous mechanical contrivances. If you were explaining his perspective, why might someone consider practical, world-changing inventions "beneath the dignity of pure science," and what does this reveal about his ultimate intellectual priorities?

From the book

← Archimandrite 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica , Volume 2 Archimedes by Thomas Little Heath Archimedes, Screw of → See also Archimedes on Wikipedia ; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer . 359765 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica , Volume 2 — Archimedes Thomas Little Heath ​ ARCHIMEDES ( c. 287–212 B.C. ), Greek mathematician and inventor, was born at Syracuse, in Sicily. He was the son of Pheidias, an astronomer, and was on intimate terms with, if not related to, Hiero, king of Syracuse, and Gelo his son. He studied at Alexandria and doubtless met there Conon of Samos, whom he admired as…

ning to leave any written record of them except in the case of the σφαιροποιἶα ( Sphere-making ), as to which see below. As, however, these machines impressed the popular imagination, they naturally figure largely in the traditions about him. Thus he devised for Hiero engines of war which almost terrified the Romans, and which protracted the siege of Syracuse for three years. There is a story that he constructed a burning mirror which set the Roman ships on fire when they were within a bowshot of the wall. This has been discredited because it is not mentioned by Polybius, Livy or Plutarch;…

the question whether a crown made for him and purporting to be of gold, did not actually contain a proportion of silver. According to one story, Archimedes was puzzled till one day, as he was stepping into a bath and observed the water running over, it occurred to him that the excess of bulk occasioned by the introduction of alloy could be measured by putting the crown and an equal weight of gold separately into a vessel filled with water, and observing the difference of overflow. He was so overjoyed when this happy thought struck him that he ran home without his clothes, shouting εὒρηκα,…

Hiero asked him to give an illustration of his contention that a very great weight could be moved by a very small force. He is said to have fixed on a large and fully laden ship and to have used a mechanical device by which Hiero was enabled to move it by himself: but accounts differ as to the particular mechanical powers employed. The water-screw which he invented (see below) was probably devised in Egypt for the purpose of irrigating fields. Archimedes died at the capture of Syracuse by Marcellus, 212 B.C. In the general massacre which followed the fall of the city, Archimedes, while…

b of Archimedes, near the Agrigentine gate, overgrown with thorns and briers. “Thus,” says Cicero ( Tusc. Disp. , v. c . 23, § 64), “would this most famous and once most learned city of Greece have remained a stranger to the tomb of one of its most ingenious citizens, had it not been discovered by a man of Arpinum.” Works .—The range and importance of the scientific labours of Archimedes will be best understood from a brief account of those writings which have come down to us; and it need only be added that his greatest work was in geometry, where he so extended the method of exhaustion as…