|
|
![[parent]](http://images.planetmath.org:8080/images/uparrow.png) Viewing Message
|
|
|
| ``Re: for those with nothing better to do''
by milogardner on 2009-11-20 13:28:32 |
|
| I like this topic, and have posted to the thread by saying:
Notability exists in mathematical layers (as well).The historical threads that first built numeration, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, weights and measures,and higher mathematical topics are notable. The gold standard in math history is not provided by journals and modern paradigms concerning modern mathematics.
The ancient math history gold standards that qualifies a topic as notable are the ancient texts that report one or more numeration, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, weights and measures or higher math foundation. Let the ancient texts speak for themselves, absent modern censors, or revisionists â who often wish history had taken a different course (the Hellenist crowd that wish Greeks had discovered all the theoretical foundations).
For example, Archimedes creation of calculus was born outside of the modern view of the âlimit theoremâ. Archimedes' calculus did not primarily use the method of exhaustion (though fragments of the modern idea are reported his his finding the area/volume of a section of a parabola). Dijksterus documents in âArchimedesâ, that Heiberg showed in 1906 that Archimedes converted an 1/4 geometic (infinite) series
A + A/4 + A/16 + A/64 + ⦠+ A/rn + â¦
(the modern method of exhaustion fragment)
to a (finite) Egyptian fraction series
A + A/4 + A/12
as used from 4,000 BCE to 1454 AD (within Fibonacciâs 1202 AD Liber Abaci â Europeâs arithmetic book for 252 years)..
Milo Gardner |
| | [ reply | up | top ] |
|
|
|
|
|
|
