[PDF] Mesopotamian Mathematics 2100 1600 Bc eBook

Author : Eleanor Robson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 544 pages
File Size : 47,82 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 9780198152460

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Mathematics was integral to Mesopotamian scribal culture: indeed, writing was invented towards the end of the fourth millennium B.C. for the express purpose of recording numericalatical information. The main body of this book is a mathematical and philological discussion of the two hundred technical constants, or "coefficients," found in early second millennium mathematics. Their names and mathematical functions are established, leading to improved interpretations of several large mathematical topics. The origins of many coefficients--and much of the more practical mathematics--are traced to late third millennium accounting and quantity surveying practices. Finally, the coefficients are used to examine some aspects of mathematics education in early Mesopotamia.

Author : Eleanor Robson
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 399 pages
File Size : 30,57 MB
Release : 2020-06-30
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 0691201404

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This monumental book traces the origins and development of mathematics in the ancient Middle East, from its earliest beginnings in the fourth millennium BCE to the end of indigenous intellectual culture in the second century BCE when cuneiform writing was gradually abandoned. Eleanor Robson offers a history like no other, examining ancient mathematics within its broader social, political, economic, and religious contexts, and showing that mathematics was not just an abstract discipline for elites but a key component in ordering society and understanding the world. The region of modern-day Iraq is uniquely rich in evidence for ancient mathematics because its prehistoric inhabitants wrote on clay tablets, many hundreds of thousands of which have been archaeologically excavated, deciphered, and translated. Drawing from these and a wealth of other textual and archaeological evidence, Robson gives an extraordinarily detailed picture of how mathematical ideas and practices were conceived, used, and taught during this period. She challenges the prevailing view that they were merely the simplistic precursors of classical Greek mathematics, and explains how the prevailing view came to be. Robson reveals the true sophistication and beauty of ancient Middle Eastern mathematics as it evolved over three thousand years, from the earliest beginnings of recorded accounting to complex mathematical astronomy. Every chapter provides detailed information on sources, and the book includes an appendix on all mathematical cuneiform tablets published before 2007.

Author : Jöran Friberg
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 544 pages
File Size : 28,75 MB
Release : 2007-07-31
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 0387345434

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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.

Author : Victor J. Katz
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 701 pages
File Size : 19,23 MB
Release : 2021-08-10
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 0691235392

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In recent decades it has become obvious that mathematics has always been a worldwide activity. But this is the first book to provide a substantial collection of English translations of key mathematical texts from the five most important ancient and medieval non-Western mathematical cultures, and to put them into full historical and mathematical context. The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam gives English readers a firsthand understanding and appreciation of these cultures' important contributions to world mathematics. The five section authors—Annette Imhausen (Egypt), Eleanor Robson (Mesopotamia), Joseph Dauben (China), Kim Plofker (India), and J. Lennart Berggren (Islam)—are experts in their fields. Each author has selected key texts and in many cases provided new translations. The authors have also written substantial section introductions that give an overview of each mathematical culture and explanatory notes that put each selection into context. This authoritative commentary allows readers to understand the sometimes unfamiliar mathematics of these civilizations and the purpose and significance of each text. Addressing a critical gap in the mathematics literature in English, this book is an essential resource for anyone with at least an undergraduate degree in mathematics who wants to learn about non-Western mathematical developments and how they helped shape and enrich world mathematics. The book is also an indispensable guide for mathematics teachers who want to use non-Western mathematical ideas in the classroom.

Author : Alexei Volkov
Publisher : Springer
Page : 471 pages
File Size : 17,33 MB
Release : 2019-01-11
Category : Education
ISBN : 3319733966

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This volume traces back the history of interaction between the “computational” or “algorithmic” aspects of elementary mathematics and mathematics education throughout ages. More specifically, the examples of mathematical practices analyzed by the historians of mathematics and mathematics education who authored the chapters in the present collection show that the development (and, in some cases, decline) of counting devices and related computational practices needs to be considered within a particular context to which they arguably belonged, namely, the context of mathematics instruction; in their contributions the authors also explore the role that the instruments played in formation of didactical approaches in various mathematical traditions, stretching from Ancient Mesopotamia to the 20th century Europe and North America.

Author : Michele Emmer
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 32,79 MB
Release : 2012-05-04
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 8847024277

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Imagine mathematics, imagine with the help of mathematics, imagine new worlds, new geometries, new forms. This book is intended to contribute to grasping how much that is interesting and new is happening in the relationships between mathematics, imagination and culture. With a look at the past, at figures and events, that help to understand the phenomena of today. It is no coincidence that this volume contains an homage to the great Italian artist of the 1700s, Andrea Pozzo, and his perspective views. Theatre, art and architecture are the topics of choice, along with music, literature and cinema. No less important are applications of mathematics to medicine and economics. The treatment is rigorous but captivating, detailed but full of evocations, an all-embracing look at the world of mathematics and culture

Author : Jöran Friberg
Publisher : Springer
Page : 566 pages
File Size : 50,75 MB
Release : 2017-02-13
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 3319445979

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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.

Author : Jens Høyrup
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 476 pages
File Size : 30,55 MB
Release : 2013-04-17
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 1475736851

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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.

Author : Jens Høyrup
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 969 pages
File Size : 14,72 MB
Release : 2019-09-20
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 303019258X

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This book presents a broad selection of articles mainly published during the last two decades on a variety of topics within the history of mathematics, mostly focusing on particular aspects of mathematical practice. This book is of interest to, and provides methodological inspiration for, historians of science or mathematics and students of these disciplines.

Author : Gwendolyn Leick
Publisher : Scarecrow Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 14,27 MB
Release : 2009-11-16
Category : History
ISBN : 0810863243

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The Greek name Mesopotamia means 'land between the rivers.' The Romans used this term for an area that they controlled only briefly (between 115 and 117 A.D.): the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, from the south Anatolian mountains ranges to the Persian Gulf. It comprises the civilizations of Sumer and Akkad (third millennium B.C.) as well as the later Babylonian and Assyrian empires of the second and first millennium. Although the 'history' of Mesopotamia in the strict sense of the term only begins with the inscriptions of Sumerian rulers around the 27th century B.C., the foundations for Mesopotamian civilization, especially the beginnings of irrigation and the emergence of large permanent settlements, were laid much earlier, in the fifth and fourth millennium. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia defines concepts, customs, and notions peculiar to the civilization of ancient Mesopotamia, from adult adoption to ziggurats. This is accomplished through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, appendixes, and hundreds of cross-reference dictionary entries on religion, economy, society, geography, and important kings and rulers.