The following is based on part five of Jacob Bronowski’s BBC series on the history of science and invention, “The Ascent of Man” (1973). It is about the rise of mathematics.
Mathematics is not the mere use of numbers, it is to reason about them.
With the Greeks, that begins with Pythagoras, born about -580. He said that numbers are the language of nature. He showed that in two ways:
- He showed how music that sounds good is music that is played on strings that come in particular lengths – those that are whole numbers.
- In about -550 he took the mathematical discoveries of the Egyptians and Babylonians, which to them were just discoveries, and showed how they followed from the nature of simpler elements – the first known mathematical proofs. It showed how number is bound up with the nature of the world, how it is the secret language of nature.
Proofs in geometry reached their height 300 years later in Alexandria when Euclid wrote down all the main ones in a book, The Elements. It is one of the most copied and translated books in all history.
Greeks applied geometry to the stars, to the motion of the sun and the planets. In 150, Ptolemy wrote down that beautiful model of the heavens, of circles within circles, in a book, which stood for over a thousand years. It came to the West from the Greeks not through the Romans, who cared little for mathematics and science, but through the Arabs.
The Arabs also brought to the West the astrolabe (pictured at the top of the post). It is an instrument that measures the height of a star or the sun that is laid over a star map. With it you can work out your latitude, sunrise, sunset, time for prayer and the direction of Mecca. It was a Greek invention that the Arabs made much more usable.
But more important than Ptolemy or the astrolabe were Arabic numbers, which by adding the number zero (an Arab word), made numbers far simpler to use than the old Roman (or even Greek) sort would allow. The Arabs brought the zero from India in 750, but it took another 500 years to catch on in the West.
Muhammad did not alow his followers to paint the human form, so Arab art becomes a wonderful play of forms. It was math as art. Bronowski shows us the beautiful palace of Alhambra as an example.
One thing the Greeks got completely wrong was how objects are seen in space: perspective. It was Alhazen, one of the great Arab minds, who got it right. That was in the 1000s. In the West Italian painters took to it first in the 1400s. It is what makes the Renaissance paintings so different than what came before.
But even with Alhazen something was still missing from the Greek and Arab picture of the world: time. That was added by the West in the 1600s with the work of Kepler, Newton and Leibniz.
See also:
These are my favorite posts. Yes, numbers are absolutely fascinating.
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Thanks for letting me know!
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I just saw a really interesting program on the history of science and the islamic world. It was neat to learn the history of algebra, because it reflects the merging of Greek knowledge with critical Indian discoveries. I honestly never knew science and math could be so interesting! And how often do you hear about India? But their contributions were so important to getting us to where we are today.
The program highlighted how scientific progress has come from combining the knowledge acquired by different cultures in different places. It also showed how invention and discovery is a building process. We couldn’t have today’s technological discoveries without earlier discoveries – not just Greek, but also Arabic, and Indian (algebra, replacing Roman numerals with numbers 1-9, the number zero, the decimal point).
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I don’t think you meant to imply this but just a point of clarification. Not only the zero but also the numbers we know as Arabic numerals are actually an Indian invention. The technical name for them is Hindu-Arabic numerals. The Arab role was only bringing them to the West.
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My, my. This post clearly contradicts your claims at the White Inventor post.
Which post reflects your true beliefs?
However, with this post you show some signs of understanding the process of intellectual synthesis.
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No Slappz:
How nice that you think Jacob Bronowski shows “some signs of understanding the process of intellectual synthesis.”
If you read the first paragraph, you would know that this post is about what Jacob Bronowski thinks. It does not record my opinion on the matter. Nonetheless, I see no reason to disagree with him in the main. I fail to see how it contradicts what I wrote about white inventors.
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I think it’s all very interesting because if one studies the history of civilization and invention one notices that it didn’t all happen in one place. Civilizations+inventions rose and fell around the world at different times. The Indo-Persian (the original Aryans) traders and scholars were getting busy while Europe was enveloped in the Dark Ages.
I’m reading a book about Islam now and it’s so interesting to see how my view of history and culture has been so colored by ethnocentrism. That’s something I’ve been trying to shake off before I start teaching my children history. We’ll be using the Story of the World series which does a better job than most, although we’ll still have to supplement heavily.
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How Islamic Inventors Changed The World
From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us many innovations that we take for granted in daily life Paul Vallely nominates 20 of the most influential- and identifies the men of genius behind them
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/how-islamic-inventors-changed-the-world-469452.html
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And in case anyone did not notice. The article has been re-runned as prelude and coverage for a current exhibition taking place within the UK
http://www.1001inventions.com/
Whilst I am on this theme, I wonder if I can find the link for Chinese inventions??
Hmmmm!!!
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Back again ha ha!!
I guess this will have to do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions
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