HOW MANY INTERPRETATIONS OF A MATHEMATICAL TEXT ARE THERE?: APOLLONIUS, DAVIDOFF, RORTY, AND ZEUTHEN

A text, mathematical or not, exists and signifies before it is assimilated and used by interpreters and commentators. Its first meaning, or significance, is that given to it by its author, a meaning and significance which are, in principle, recoverable by the sympathetic interpreter, i.e., the historian. All other interpretations, fashionable nowadays as post-modernist textual readings, which, to a larger or smaller extent, abandon the text's authorial significations are wanting and, therefore, historically unacceptable.

This will be exemplified by means of a couple of texts from the Conica of Apollonius.