Amazing Traces of a Babylonian Origin in Greek Mathematics

Amazing Traces of a Babylonian Origin in Greek Mathematics PDF Author: J”ran Friberg
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9812704523
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
The sequel to Unexpected Links Between Egyptian and Babylonian Mathematics (World Scientific, 2005), this book is based on the author's intensive and ground breaking studies of the long history of Mesopotamian mathematics, from the late 4th to the late 1st millennium BC. It is argued in the book that several of the most famous Greek mathematicians appear to have been familiar with various aspects of Babylonian “metric algebra,” a convenient name for an elaborate combination of geometry, metrology, and quadratic equations that is known from both Babylonian and pre-Babylonian mathematical clay tablets. The book's use of “metric algebra diagrams” in the Babylonian style, where the side lengths and areas of geometric figures are explicitly indicated, instead of wholly abstract “lettered diagrams” in the Greek style, is essential for an improved understanding of many interesting propositions and constructions in Greek mathematical works. The author's comparisons with Babylonian mathematics also lead to new answers to some important open questions in the history of Greek mathematics.

Amazing Traces of a Babylonian Origin in Greek Mathematics

Amazing Traces of a Babylonian Origin in Greek Mathematics PDF Author: J”ran Friberg
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9812704523
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497

Get Book Here

Book Description
The sequel to Unexpected Links Between Egyptian and Babylonian Mathematics (World Scientific, 2005), this book is based on the author's intensive and ground breaking studies of the long history of Mesopotamian mathematics, from the late 4th to the late 1st millennium BC. It is argued in the book that several of the most famous Greek mathematicians appear to have been familiar with various aspects of Babylonian “metric algebra,” a convenient name for an elaborate combination of geometry, metrology, and quadratic equations that is known from both Babylonian and pre-Babylonian mathematical clay tablets. The book's use of “metric algebra diagrams” in the Babylonian style, where the side lengths and areas of geometric figures are explicitly indicated, instead of wholly abstract “lettered diagrams” in the Greek style, is essential for an improved understanding of many interesting propositions and constructions in Greek mathematical works. The author's comparisons with Babylonian mathematics also lead to new answers to some important open questions in the history of Greek mathematics.

Revolutions and Continuity in Greek Mathematics

Revolutions and Continuity in Greek Mathematics PDF Author: Michalis Sialaros
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110565951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
This volume brings together a number of leading scholars working in the field of ancient Greek mathematics to present their latest research. In their respective area of specialization, all contributors offer stimulating approaches to questions of historical and historiographical ‘revolutions’ and ‘continuity’. Taken together, they provide a powerful lens for evaluating the applicability of Thomas Kuhn’s ideas on ‘scientific revolutions’ to the discipline of ancient Greek mathematics. Besides the latest historiographical studies on ‘geometrical algebra’ and ‘premodern algebra’, the reader will find here some papers which offer new insights into the controversial relationship between Greek and pre-Hellenic mathematical practices. Some other contributions place emphasis on the other edge of the historical spectrum, by exploring historical lines of ‘continuity’ between ancient Greek, Byzantine and post-Hellenic mathematics. The terminology employed by Greek mathematicians, along with various non-textual and material elements, is another topic which some of the essays in the volume explore. Finally, the last three articles focus on a traditionally rich source on ancient Greek mathematics; namely the works of Plato and Aristotle.

Unexpected Links Between Egyptian and Babylonian Mathematics

Unexpected Links Between Egyptian and Babylonian Mathematics PDF Author: J”ran Friberg
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9812701125
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Mesopotamian mathematics is known from a great number of cuneiform texts, most of them Old Babylonian, some Late Babylonian or pre-Old-Babylonian, and has been intensively studied during the last couple of decades. In contrast to this Egyptian mathematics is known from only a small number of papyrus texts, and the few books and papers that have been written about Egyptian mathematical papyri have mostly reiterated the same old presentations and interpretations of the texts. In this book, it is shown that the methods developed by the author for the close study of mathematical cuneiform texts can also be successfully applied to all kinds of Egyptian mathematical texts, hieratic, demotic, or Greek-Egyptian. At the same time, comparisons of a large number of individual Egyptian mathematical exercises with Babylonian parallels yield many new insights into the nature of Egyptian mathematics and show that Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics display greater similarities than expected.

New Mathematical Cuneiform Texts

New Mathematical Cuneiform Texts PDF Author: Jöran Friberg
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319445979
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 566

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Book Description
This monograph presents in great detail a large number of both unpublished and previously published Babylonian mathematical texts in the cuneiform script. It is a continuation of the work A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts (Springer 2007) written by Jöran Friberg, the leading expert on Babylonian mathematics. Focussing on the big picture, Friberg explores in this book several Late Babylonian arithmetical and metro-mathematical table texts from the sites of Babylon, Uruk and Sippar, collections of mathematical exercises from four Old Babylonian sites, as well as a new text from Early Dynastic/Early Sargonic Umma, which is the oldest known collection of mathematical exercises. A table of reciprocals from the end of the third millennium BC, differing radically from well-documented but younger tables of reciprocals from the Neo-Sumerian and Old-Babylonian periods, as well as a fragment of a Neo-Sumerian clay tablet showing a new type of a labyrinth are also discussed. The material is presented in the form of photos, hand copies, transliterations and translations, accompanied by exhaustive explanations. The previously unpublished mathematical cuneiform texts presented in this book were discovered by Farouk Al-Rawi, who also made numerous beautiful hand copies of most of the clay tablets. Historians of mathematics and the Mesopotamian civilization, linguists and those interested in ancient labyrinths will find New Mathematical Cuneiform Texts particularly valuable. The book contains many texts of previously unknown types and material that is not available elsewhere.

A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts

A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts PDF Author: Jöran Friberg
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387345434
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
The book analyzes the mathematical tablets from the private collection of Martin Schoyen. It includes analyses of tablets which have never been studied before. This provides new insight into Babylonian understanding of sophisticated mathematical objects. The book is carefully written and organized. The tablets are classified according to mathematical content and purpose, while drawings and pictures are provided for the most interesting tablets.

The Babylonian Theorem

The Babylonian Theorem PDF Author: Peter S. Rudman
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615929339
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Rudman explores the facisnating history of mathematics among the Babylonians and Egyptians. He formulates a Babylonian Theorem, which he shows was used to derive the Pythagorean Theorem about a millennium before its purported discovery by Pythagoras.

The Crest of the Peacock

The Crest of the Peacock PDF Author: George Gheverghese Joseph
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691135266
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 593

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Book Description
The contents of this book cover the history of mathematics, the beginnings of written mathematics, Egyptian and Mesopotamian mathematics, special topics in Chinese mathematics, and much more.

The God Problem

The God Problem PDF Author: Howard Bloom
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1616145528
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 714

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Book Description
God’s war crimes, Aristotle’s sneaky tricks, Einstein’s pajamas, information theory’s blind spot, Stephen Wolfram’s new kind of science, and six monkeys at six typewriters getting it wrong. What do these have to do with the birth of a universe and with your need for meaning? Everything, as you’re about to see. How does the cosmos do something it has long been thought only gods could achieve? How does an inanimate universe generate stunning new forms and unbelievable new powers without a creator? How does the cosmos create? That’s the central question of this book, which finds clues in strange places. Why A does not equal A. Why one plus one does not equal two. How the Greeks used kickballs to reinvent the universe. And the reason that Polish-born Benoît Mandelbrot—the father of fractal geometry—rebelled against his uncle. You’ll take a scientific expedition into the secret heart of a cosmos you’ve never seen. Not just any cosmos. An electrifyingly inventive cosmos. An obsessive-compulsive cosmos. A driven, ambitious cosmos. A cosmos of colossal shocks. A cosmos of screaming, stunning surprise. A cosmos that breaks five of science’s most sacred laws. Yes, five. And you’ll be rewarded with author Howard Bloom’s provocative new theory of the beginning, middle, and end of the universe—the Bloom toroidal model, also known as the big bagel theory—which explains two of the biggest mysteries in physics: dark energy and why, if antimatter and matter are created in equal amounts, there is so little antimatter in this universe. Called "truly awesome" by Nobel Prize–winner Dudley Herschbach, The God Problem will pull you in with the irresistible attraction of a black hole and spit you out again enlightened with the force of a big bang. Be prepared to have your mind blown. From the Hardcover edition.

Between Greece and Babylonia

Between Greece and Babylonia PDF Author: Kathryn Stevens
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108419550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Focusing on Greece and Babylonia, this book provides a new, cross-cultural approach to the intellectual history of the Hellenistic world.

Hidden Harmonies

Hidden Harmonies PDF Author: Ellen Kaplan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608192911
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A squared plus b squared equals c squared. It sounds simple, doesn't it? Yet this familiar expression is a gateway into the riotous garden of mathematics, and sends us on a journey of exploration in the company of two inspired guides, acclaimed authors Robert and Ellen Kaplan. With wit, verve, and clarity, they trace the life of the Pythagorean theorem, from ancient Babylon to the present, visiting along the way Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, President James Garfield, and the Freemasons-not to mention the elusive Pythagoras himself, who almost certainly did not make the statement that bears his name. How can a theorem have more than one proof? Why does this one have more than two hundred-or is it four thousand? The Pythagorean theorem has even more applications than proofs: Ancient Egyptians used it for surveying property lines, and today astronomers call on it to measure the distance between stars. Its generalizations are stunning-the theorem works even with shapes on the sides that aren't squares, and not just in two dimensions, but any number you like, up to infinity. And perhaps its most intriguing feature of all, this tidy expression opened the door to the world of irrational numbers, an untidy discovery that deeply troubled Pythagoras's disciples. Like the authors' bestselling The Nothing That Is and Chances Are . . .-hailed as "erudite and witty," "magnificent," and "exhilarating"-Hidden Harmonies makes the excitement of mathematics palpable.