An introduction to the mathematics of the Golden Age of medieval Islam

 The first thing that surprises me is how early people have started wondering about the shape of earth and the circumference. An extraordinary force of curiosity must have been present for people to go and tackle these problems that most of us today would not bother. Maybe physics major would design their experiment on measuring such a thing, but most of us is content with our ground being flat because that's what it appears to us.

Another surprising thing is the Islam's desire to learn from other culture. It was mentioned that they sent out people to gather and translate copies of works that are important to the Greeks, and that doesn't seem to immediately benefit them in some way. Again, it seems to be some intellectual thoughts that drive them to do so. Even today, when translating might not be as tedious or difficult, quite a lot of work remains in their own language because we don't actively seek to translate everything (though I'm sure small groups of people are always working hard to bring important work to others by translating, and thank you for that).

Lastly, the Arabic number system that we use today is dated back to al-Khwārizmī’s! We don't give much thought when we are exposed to it, and it may seem natural for almost all of us. However, if we look back at doing math with Babylonian's figure, we would appreciate our current number system much more. Our precise and compact notation allows us to spend the time on reasoning and not on documenting, and I think this has a profound impact on how we learn mathematics from day 1. (Interestingly, I have read how the number system and the word associated with each number could play a role in the speed of mental math and subsequent mathematical development. The fact that we assign different names to numbers like 11 25 53 as eleven, twenty-five, and fifty-three as opposed to one-ten-and-one like the number system might be a factor when it comes to mental math and association.)

Comments

  1. Susan Gerofsky9 December 2020 at 13:41

    Great commentary! I'm glad you're reading about the way that number names affect mental calculation -- there's been lots of interesting writing about this in the past 20 years, especially comparing Chinese and related languages to English and French. Interesting about the circumference of the earth : the Greeks also estimated this quite accurately!

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