"Without the stupendous work of Ptolemy, which completed and closed antique astronomy, Kepler's , and hence the mechanics of Newton, would have been impossible. Without the conic sections of Apollonius, which Newton knew thoroughly, his development of the law of gravitation is equally unthinkable. And Newton's integral calculus can be understood only as a continuation of Archimedes' determination of areas and volumes. The history of mechanics as an exact science begins with the law of the lever, the laws of hydrostatics and the determination of mass centers by Archimedes. ...all the developments which converge in the work of Newton, those of mathematics, of mechanics and of astronomy, begin in Greece."