Download or read book Al Karaji written by Susan Nichols and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tenth-century mathematician al-Karaji is best known for his writings on algebra and for freeing algebra from geometry. The scholar spent most of his life in Baghdad, where he established a school for algebra and served as a vizier for the Abbasid government. Al-Karaji also was an accomplished engineer who wrote extensively on water extraction. Many of his hydrological ideas are still used in the Middle East today. While some modern scholars question his originality, others maintain he was an important transition between ancient mathematics and modern algebra.
Download or read book The Beginnings and Evolution of Algebra written by I. G. Bashmakova and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-04-27 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the evolution of one of the cornerstones of modern mathematics.
Download or read book Medieval Science Technology and Medicine written by Thomas F. Glick and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-27 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine details the whole scope of scientific knowledge in the medieval period in more than 300 A to Z entries. This resource discusses the research, application of knowledge, cultural and technology exchanges, experimentation, and achievements in the many disciplines related to science and technology. Coverage includes inventions, discoveries, concepts, places and fields of study, regions, and significant contributors to various fields of science. There are also entries on South-Central and East Asian science. This reference work provides an examination of medieval scientific tradition as well as an appreciation for the relationship between medieval science and the traditions it supplanted and those that replaced it. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages website.
Download or read book A to Z of Mathematicians written by Tucker McElroy and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles more than 150 mathematicians from around the world who made important contributions to their field, including Rene Descartes, Emily Noether and Bernhard Riemann.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science written by Roshdi Rashed and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 1135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arabic contribution is fundamental to the history of science, mathematics and technology, but until now no single publication has offered an up-to-date synthesis of knowledge in this area. In three fully-illustrated volumes the Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science documents the history and philosophy of Arabic science from the earliest times to the present day. The set as a whole covers seven centuries. Thirty chapters, written by an international team of specialists from Europe, America, the Middle East and Russia cover such areas as astronomy, mathematics, music, engineering, nautical science and scientific institutions.
Download or read book Books IV to VII of Diophantus Arithmetica written by Jacques Sesiano and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition of Books IV to VII of Diophantus' Arithmetica, which are extant only in a recently discovered Arabic translation, is the outgrowth of a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Brown University Department of the History of Mathematics in May 1975. Early in 1973, my thesis adviser, Gerald Toomer, learned of the existence of this manuscript in A. Gulchln-i Macanl's just-published catalogue of the mathematical manuscripts in the Mashhad Shrine Library, and secured a photographic copy of it. In Sep tember 1973, he proposed that the study of it be the subject of my dissertation. Since limitations of time compelled us to decide on priorities, the first objective was to establish a critical text and to translate it. For this reason, the Arabic text and the English translation appear here virtually as they did in my thesis. Major changes, however, are found in the mathematical com mentary and, even more so, in the Arabic index. The discussion of Greek and Arabic interpolations is entirely new, as is the reconstruction of the history of the Arithmetica from Diophantine to Arabic times. It is with the deepest gratitude that I acknowledge my great debt to Gerald Toomer for his constant encouragement and invaluable assistance.
Download or read book The Britannica Guide to Algebra and Trigonometry written by Britannica Educational Publishing and published by Britannica Educational Publishing. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Calculating and manipulating the unknown has been the enterprise of the field of algebra since its earliest inception in Babylon and ancient Egypt. Trigonometry draws on principles presented in algebra and uses angle measurements to elaborate on geometric calculations. Essential to further mathematical and scientific study, both algebra and trigonometry provide crucial tools in managing variables and understanding the relationships between them. This volume presents the fundamentals of these fascinating areas of mathematics while chronicling their respective histories.
Download or read book The Development of Arabic Mathematics Between Arithmetic and Algebra written by R. Rashed and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An understanding of developments in Arabic mathematics between the IXth and XVth century is vital to a full appreciation of the history of classical mathematics. This book draws together more than ten studies to highlight one of the major developments in Arabic mathematical thinking, provoked by the double fecondation between arithmetic and the algebra of al-Khwarizmi, which led to the foundation of diverse chapters of mathematics: polynomial algebra, combinatorial analysis, algebraic geometry, algebraic theory of numbers, diophantine analysis and numerical calculus. Thanks to epistemological analysis, and the discovery of hitherto unknown material, the author has brought these chapters into the light, proposes another periodization for classical mathematics, and questions current ideology in writing its history. Since the publication of the French version of these studies and of this book, its main results have been admitted by historians of Arabic mathematics, and integrated into their recent publications. This book is already a vital reference for anyone seeking to understand history of Arabic mathematics, and its contribution to Latin as well as to later mathematics. The English translation will be of particular value to historians and philosophers of mathematics and of science.
Download or read book Lengths Widths Surfaces written by Jens Høyrup and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this examination of the Babylonian cuneiform "algebra" texts, based on a detailed investigation of the terminology and discursive organization of the texts, Jens Høyrup proposes that the traditional interpretation must be rejected. The texts turn out to speak not of pure numbers, but of the dimensions and areas of rectangles and other measurable geometrical magnitudes, often serving as representatives of other magnitudes (prices, workdays, etc...), much as pure numbers represent concrete magnitudes in modern applied algebra. Moreover, the geometrical procedures are seen to be reasoned to the same extent as the solutions of modern equation algebra, though not built on any explicit deductive structure.
Download or read book Adaptive Strategies for Water Heritage written by Carola Hein and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-10-18 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Open Access book, building on research initiated by scholars from the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Global Heritage and Development (CHGD) and ICOMOS Netherlands, presents multidisciplinary research that connects water to heritage. Through twenty-one chapters it explores landscapes, cities, engineering structures and buildings from around the world. It describes how people have actively shaped the course, form and function of water for human settlement and the development of civilizations, establishing socio-economic structures, policies and cultures; a rich world of narratives, laws and practices; and an extensive network of infrastructure, buildings and urban form. The book is organized in five thematic sections that link practices of the past to the design of the present and visions of the future: part I discusses drinking water management; part II addresses water use in agriculture; part III explores water management for land reclamation and defense; part IV examines river and coastal planning; and part V focuses on port cities and waterfront regeneration. Today, the many complex systems of the past are necessarily the basis for new systems that both preserve the past and manage water today: policy makers and designers can work together to recognize and build on the traditional knowledge and skills that old structure embody. This book argues that there is a need for a common agenda and an integrated policy that addresses the preservation, transformation and adaptive reuse of historic water-related structures. Throughout, it imagines how such efforts will help us develop sustainable futures for cities, landscapes and bodies of water.
Download or read book The Crest of the Peacock written by George Gheverghese Joseph and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Parrot s Theorem written by Denis Guedj and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mr. Ruche, a Parisian bookseller, receives a bequest from a long lost friend in the Amazon of a vast library of math books, which propels him into a great exploration of the story of mathematics. Meanwhile Max, whose family lives with Mr. Ruche, takes in a voluble parrot who will discuss math with anyone. When Mr. Ruche learns of his friend's mysterious death in a Brazilian rainforest, he decides that with the parrot's help he will use these books to teach Max and his brother and sister the mysteries of Euclid's Elements, Pythagoras's Theorem and the countless other mathematical wonders. But soon it becomes clear that Mr. Ruche has inherited the library for reasons other than enlightenment, and before he knows it the household is racing to prevent the parrot and vital, new theorems from falling into the wrong hands. An immediate bestseller when first published in France, The Parrot's Theorem charmingly combines a straightforward history of mathematics and a first-rate murder mystery.
Download or read book The Arithmetica of Diophantus written by Jean Christianidis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-11-01 with total page 891 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers an English translation of all ten extant books of Diophantus of Alexandria’s Arithmetica, along with a comprehensive conceptual, historical, and mathematical commentary. Before his work became the inspiration for the emerging field of number theory in the seventeenth century, Diophantus (ca. 3rd c. CE) was known primarily as an algebraist. This volume explains how his method of solving arithmetical problems agrees both conceptually and procedurally with the premodern algebra later practiced in Arabic, Latin, and European vernaculars, and how this algebra differs radically from the modern algebra initiated by François Viète and René Descartes. It also discusses other surviving traces of ancient Greek algebra and follows the influence of the Arithmetica in medieval Islam, Byzantium, and the European Renaissance down to the 1621 publication of Claude-Gaspard Bachet’s edition. After the English translation the book provides a problem-by-problem commentary explaining the solutions in a manner compatible with Diophantus’s mode of thought. The Arithmetica of Diophantus provides an invaluable resource for historians of mathematics, science, and technology, as well as those studying ancient Greek, medieval Islamic and Byzantine, and Renaissance history. In addition, the volume is also suitable for mathematicians and mathematics educators.
Download or read book Encyclopaedia of the History of Science Technology and Medicine in Non Westen Cultures written by Helaine Selin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 1140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopaedia fills a gap in both the history of science and in cultural stud ies. Reference works on other cultures tend either to omit science completely or pay little attention to it, and those on the history of science almost always start with the Greeks, with perhaps a mention of the Islamic world as a trans lator of Greek scientific works. The purpose of the Encyclopaedia is to bring together knowledge of many disparate fields in one place and to legitimize the study of other cultures' science. Our aim is not to claim the superiority of other cultures, but to engage in a mutual exchange of ideas. The Western aca demic divisions of science, technology, and medicine have been united in the Encyclopaedia because in ancient cultures these disciplines were connected. This work contributes to redressing the balance in the number of reference works devoted to the study of Western science, and encourages awareness of cultural diversity. The Encyclopaedia is the first compilation of this sort, and it is testimony both to the earlier Eurocentric view of academia as well as to the widened vision of today. There is nothing that crosses disciplinary and geographic boundaries, dealing with both scientific and philosophical issues, to the extent that this work does. xi PERSONAL NOTE FROM THE EDITOR Many years ago I taught African history at a secondary school in Central Africa.
Download or read book Taming the Unknown written by Victor J. Katz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-21 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is algebra? For some, it is an abstract language of x's and y’s. For mathematics majors and professional mathematicians, it is a world of axiomatically defined constructs like groups, rings, and fields. Taming the Unknown considers how these two seemingly different types of algebra evolved and how they relate. Victor Katz and Karen Parshall explore the history of algebra, from its roots in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, China, and India, through its development in the medieval Islamic world and medieval and early modern Europe, to its modern form in the early twentieth century. Defining algebra originally as a collection of techniques for determining unknowns, the authors trace the development of these techniques from geometric beginnings in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and classical Greece. They show how similar problems were tackled in Alexandrian Greece, in China, and in India, then look at how medieval Islamic scholars shifted to an algorithmic stage, which was further developed by medieval and early modern European mathematicians. With the introduction of a flexible and operative symbolism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, algebra entered into a dynamic period characterized by the analytic geometry that could evaluate curves represented by equations in two variables, thereby solving problems in the physics of motion. This new symbolism freed mathematicians to study equations of degrees higher than two and three, ultimately leading to the present abstract era. Taming the Unknown follows algebra’s remarkable growth through different epochs around the globe.
Download or read book Revolutions and Continuity in Greek Mathematics written by Michalis Sialaros and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-04-23 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Mathematical Knowledge and the Interplay of Practices written by José Ferreirós and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a new approach to the epistemology of mathematics by viewing mathematics as a human activity whose knowledge is intimately linked with practice. Charting an exciting new direction in the philosophy of mathematics, José Ferreirós uses the crucial idea of a continuum to provide an account of the development of mathematical knowledge that reflects the actual experience of doing math and makes sense of the perceived objectivity of mathematical results. Describing a historically oriented, agent-based philosophy of mathematics, Ferreirós shows how the mathematical tradition evolved from Euclidean geometry to the real numbers and set-theoretic structures. He argues for the need to take into account a whole web of mathematical and other practices that are learned and linked by agents, and whose interplay acts as a constraint. Ferreirós demonstrates how advanced mathematics, far from being a priori, is based on hypotheses, in contrast to elementary math, which has strong cognitive and practical roots and therefore enjoys certainty. Offering a wealth of philosophical and historical insights, Mathematical Knowledge and the Interplay of Practices challenges us to rethink some of our most basic assumptions about mathematics, its objectivity, and its relationship to culture and science.
