A History of Mathematics From Mesopotamia to Modernity

6AHistory ofMathematics A second well-known example, equally interesting, confronted the Greeks in the nineteenth century. A cla ...

Introduction 7 so far as to claim that different cultures (on which he was unusually well-informed) have different concepts of n ...

8AHistory ofMathematics argue that, since Babylonian mathematics has become absorbed into our own (and this too is open to argum ...

Introduction 9 Consider...the men who called Copernicus mad because he proclaimed that the earth moved. They were not either jus ...

10 A History ofMathematics seen as ‘true’ in the same sense after Einstein—Euclidean geometry is still valid, even if its status ...

Introduction 11 as milieus, groups, and actors; and Dieudonné has died without conceding that anyone had earned his chocolate mi ...

12 A History ofMathematics and even chaos theory one could see outside forces at work. In earlier history, when we have the evid ...

Introduction 13 Egyptians and Babylonians, or Youschkevitch on the Islamic tradition, may have been available for some time befo ...

1. Babylonian mathematics 1. On beginnings Obviously the pioneers and masters of hydraulic society were singularly well equipped ...

BabylonianMathematics 15 their priests. Writing of the most basic kind was developed around 3300bce, and continued using a more ...

16 A History ofMathematics Fig. 2Tablet VAT16773 (c. 2500bce).; numerical tally of different types of pigs. Each dynasty lasted ...

BabylonianMathematics 17 poorer, largely because papyrus, the Egyptian writing-material, lasts so badly; there are two major mat ...

18 A History ofMathematics (a) (b) Fig. 3The ‘stone-weighing’ tablet YBC4652; (a) photograph and (b) line drawing. arguments on ...

BabylonianMathematics 19 As you can see, from tablet to drawing to written Akkadian text to translation we have stages over whic ...

20 A History ofMathematics Exercise 2.(which will be dealt with below). Clearly what we have here, in the translation, is a ques ...

BabylonianMathematics 21 problem A, then do procedure B. The ‘point’ of the sum, then, is not mysterious, and indeed we can reco ...

22 A History ofMathematics There is probably better conservation of tablets now than when the above was written, but the long de ...

BabylonianMathematics 23 Fig. 4The basic cuneiform numbers from 1 to 60. Fig. 5How larger cuneiform numbers are formed. You can ...

24 A History ofMathematics This way of writing numbers is so advanced and sophisticated that it has impressed most commentators, ...

BabylonianMathematics 25 unweighed stone, in this case. The Egyptians were using the same idea a little afterwards, and may have ...