  This conception may be called the decompositional conception of analysis (see   Section 4).  But it is not the only conception, and indeed is arguably neither the dominant conception in the pre-modern period nor the conception that  is characteristic of at least one major strand in  ‘analytic’ philosophy. In ancient Greek thought,  ‘analysis’ referred primarily to the process of working  back to first principles by means of which something could then be  demonstrated. This conception may be called the regressive  conception of analysis (see   Section 2).  In the work of Frege and Russell, on the other hand, before the  process of decomposition could take place, the statements to be  analyzed had first to be translated into their ‘correct’  logical form (see   Section 6).  This suggests that analysis also involves a transformative  or interpretive dimension. This too, however, has its roots  in earlier thought (see especially the supplementary sections on   Ancient Greek Geometry  and   Medieval Philosophy).  