  Pappus's account of method in ancient Greek geometry suggests  that the regressive conception of analysis was dominant at the  time—however much other conceptions may also have been  implicitly involved (see the supplementary section on   Ancient Greek Geometry).  In the early modern period, the decompositional conception became  widespread (see   Section 4).  What characterizes analytic philosophy—or at least that central strand that originates in the work of Frege and Russell—is the  recognition of what was called earlier the transformative or interpretive dimension of analysis (see   Section 1.1).  Any analysis presupposes a particular framework of interpretation,  and work is done in interpreting what we are seeking to  analyze as part of the process of regression and decomposition. This  may involve transforming it in some way, in order for the  resources of a given theory or conceptual framework to be brought to  bear. Euclidean geometry provides a good illustration of this. But it is even more obvious in the case of analytic geometry, where the  geometrical problem is first ‘translated’ into the  language of algebra and arithmetic in order to solve it more easily  (see the supplementary section on   Descartes and Analytic Geometry).  What Descartes and Fermat did for analytic geometry, Frege and  Russell did for analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophy is  ‘analytic’ much more in the sense that analytic geometry  is ‘analytic’ than in the crude decompositional sense  that Kant understood it.