The Problem of Magnitudes and Numbers in Early Modern Mathematics

Archimedes his work with squaring the circle and stuff like that, he does what is just, in a plain faced way, looks like proto calculus. But they don't do that either. Dealing with magnitudes and numbers is a very different enterprise. And so if i take it seriously that they weren't just dumb, then i feel like they're working with a conceptual scheme that means that number becomes something different than it was for them. When you start numbering a magnitude, you change what you mean by it. The only reason why it sort of resognates to me is that it's either that they just couldn't see it for hundreds of years, or that they understood