5.1 It is always incredible to observe how a civilization can decline, usually taking down academic progress with it just as the founding of civilizations provided the stability to begin study. This case seems less clear cut than most, as the city of Alexandria itself seemed to experience a prosperous and stable period during the Pax Romana, but theoretical studies suffered because the Roman empire brought different values. It is interesting how much of a difference culture made, especially when the difference in preference between Greeks and Romans, respectively preferring math and engineering, seems so arbitrary. As the book pointed out, not one single Roman became a famous mathematician during the era.The rise of Christianity also turned
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The “cattle problem” could be considered the king of all these. It was supposedly written by Archimedes, who was interested in large numbers such as those in the problem—amazingly, the result was so large that it was not calculated until the late 1800s. Greek influence spread to India via Alexander the Great’s conquest, and mathematics developed and flourished in India roughly between 400 and 1200 A.D., which the book describes as “superior, in everything except geometry, to that of the Greeks.” This interested me because India’s mathematical age seems to get far less attention historically. As with the Greeks, India’s mathematical Golden Age also had intellectual giants, Hindu mathematicians Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Mahavira, and Bhaskara. In particular, Indian mathematics was intimately linked to astronomy, as with other civilizations, in order to do astrology. I found this especially notable, as astrology was used to calculate auspicious marriage dates then just as it often is today. Like Greek mathematics prior to Diophantus, India’s algebra also followed a rhetorical approach, which must have limited it to a great extent. Indian math also only used positive integers, although it explored multiple solutions to algebraic problems. It is especially notable how ax + by = c was …show more content…
Pappus, attempted to consolidate established knowledge of geometry along with some of his own contributions. The most interesting contribution seems to be a theorem about making a solid by the revolution of a plane area (i.e. moving a 2D shape around an axis to make a 3D shape). Hypatia became the first prominent female mathematician of Ancient Greece and also a scholar in astronomy, medicine, and philosophy, before being killed for opposing Christianity. Finally, Proclus, Boethius, and Cassiodorus were commentators whose works provide information on lost works of the classical era and bridge the gap to the medieval times, as Muslims burned the remainder of the library of Alexandria in 641 upon conquering the
The “cattle problem” could be considered the king of all these. It was supposedly written by Archimedes, who was interested in large numbers such as those in the problem—amazingly, the result was so large that it was not calculated until the late 1800s. Greek influence spread to India via Alexander the Great’s conquest, and mathematics developed and flourished in India roughly between 400 and 1200 A.D., which the book describes as “superior, in everything except geometry, to that of the Greeks.” This interested me because India’s mathematical age seems to get far less attention historically. As with the Greeks, India’s mathematical Golden Age also had intellectual giants, Hindu mathematicians Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Mahavira, and Bhaskara. In particular, Indian mathematics was intimately linked to astronomy, as with other civilizations, in order to do astrology. I found this especially notable, as astrology was used to calculate auspicious marriage dates then just as it often is today. Like Greek mathematics prior to Diophantus, India’s algebra also followed a rhetorical approach, which must have limited it to a great extent. Indian math also only used positive integers, although it explored multiple solutions to algebraic problems. It is especially notable how ax + by = c was …show more content…
Pappus, attempted to consolidate established knowledge of geometry along with some of his own contributions. The most interesting contribution seems to be a theorem about making a solid by the revolution of a plane area (i.e. moving a 2D shape around an axis to make a 3D shape). Hypatia became the first prominent female mathematician of Ancient Greece and also a scholar in astronomy, medicine, and philosophy, before being killed for opposing Christianity. Finally, Proclus, Boethius, and Cassiodorus were commentators whose works provide information on lost works of the classical era and bridge the gap to the medieval times, as Muslims burned the remainder of the library of Alexandria in 641 upon conquering the