History
The problem owes its name to a story concerning the citizens of Delos, who consulted the oracle at Delphi in order to learn how to defeat a plague sent by Apollo. According to Plutarch it was the citizens of Delos who consulted the oracle at Delphi, seeking a solution for their internal political problems at the time, which had intensified relationships among the citizens. The oracle responded that they must double the size of the altar to Apollo, which was a regular cube. The answer seemed strange to the Delians and they consulted Plato, who was able to interpret the oracle as the mathematical problem of doubling the volume of a given cube, thus explaining the oracle as the advice of Apollo for the citizens of Delos to occupy themselves with the study of geometry and mathematics in order to calm down their passions.
According to Plutarch, Plato gave the problem to Eudoxus and Archytas and Menaechmus, who solved the problem using mechanical means, earning a rebuke from Plato for not solving the problem using pure geometry (Plut., Quaestiones convivales VIII.ii, 718ef). This may be why the problem is referred to in the 350s BC by the author of the pseudo-Platonic Sisyphus (388e) as still unsolved. However another version of the story says that all three found solutions but they were too abstract to be of practical value.
A significant development in finding a solution to the problem was the discovery by Hippocrates of Chios that it is equivalent to finding two mean proportionals between a line segment and another with twice the length. In modern notation, this means that given segments of lengths a and 2a, the duplication of the cube is equivalent to finding segments of lengths r and s so that
In turn, this means that
But Pierre Wantzel proved in 1837 that the cube root of 2 is not constructible; that is, it cannot be constructed with straightedge and compass.
Read more about this topic: Doubling The Cube
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—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
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“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)