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Why didn't the Romans contribute much to mathematics?

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Re: Why didn't the Romans contribute much to mathematics?

#141

Post by Retric »

roboys wrote: post #128
Chathamization wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, there definitely seems to have been a large decline in population, economic output, political cohesion, urbanization, record keeping, trade, etc., in much of the former Roman world following the fifth/sixth century. I suppose it's a value judgement on whether one considers that a "bad time."

The dark ages also saw a huge disparity in education between the East and the West. Until the 15th century less than 5 people in Europe could do long division. For comparison, Aryabhatta discovered calculus in 5th century India and Madhava made large contributions in the 13th century (Newton/Leibniz were wrongly credited for similar work many years later).

> Until the 15th century less than 5 people in Europe could do long division.

That’s wildly inaccurate. Arithmetic was very much a subject at several schools with the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division all being taught. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrivium

Long division being difficult in Roman numerals is one of the reasons for the switch.

Re: Why didn't the Romans contribute much to mathematics?

#142

Post by dkersten »

cbHXBY1D wrote: post #57
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Our most important achievement has been to create a system where smart people spend their life trying to get people to click on ads, using morally dubious dark-patterns.

If I had to bet, western society will be judged for creating an industrialized world while knowingly ignoring the effect of greenhouse gases.

None of this matters as long as we have high speed access to an infinite supply of cat pictures.

Re: Why didn't the Romans contribute much to mathematics?

#143

Post by emiliobumachar »

gingabriska wrote: post #124
olooney wrote: post #2

Romans aren't the outlier here. Most ancient civilizations had a similar level of accomplishment; a one or two outstanding mathematicians every century, a few practical applications, some new rules of thumb. We did have a dark age, after the Romans after all, which likewise produced little (not none) new math. The question should rather be, what made the Greeks (and, later, others who adopted their deductive, axiomat…

>Romans after all, which likewise produced little (not none) new math. They had Archimedes of Syracuse

Archimedes was Greek, the Romans killed him.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes

Re: Why didn't the Romans contribute much to mathematics?

#144

Post by wavefunction »

toasterlovin wrote: post #50
ZhuanXia wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rise of technology was not so much the birth of new capacities, but the removal of old constraints. China, despite a much larger and more educated population, did not spark the industrial revolution. Their feedback loops were too stable, their elites too competent. From the perspective of the old power hierarchy, the industrial revolution was a disaster. The nobility floated on that great cruel ocean first charte…

How much of the Chinese/Japanese vs Western Europe dichotomy in term of technological development do you think is due to geography (Europe has been fractured, politically, for all of history, mostly due to geography, I think, whereas China and Japan have both been comparatively unified and stable for thousands of years). My thinking is that this has a lot to do with how European elites were not able to prevent accumu…

Were China and Japan really as peaceful as is sometimes stated? Just looking at a timeline of Chinese historical events (and probably by no means exhaustive) I see rebellions and invasions and peasant army uprisings for thousands of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Chinese_history

Re: Why didn't the Romans contribute much to mathematics?

#145

Post by Bayart »

29athrowaway wrote: post #125

Paper makes you productive. Romans did not have it. They had papyrus, parchments and wax tablets, none of them were as convenient or affordable as paper. The adoption of paper was what really set things in motion in Europe, the Renaissance.

>They had papyrus, parchments and wax tablets, none of them were as convenient or affordable as paper.

Papyrus is cheap, easy to make and affordable. It would certainly have been much cheaper than paper, which didn't become any good until substantial industrial and chemical advancements. It was used all over the place. We don't have much left from the Northern Mediterranean because it rots.

Wax tablets were used until the 19th century because it's also cheap and practical.

Velum didn't become mainstream until the Islamic invasion of Egypt cut the supply of papyrus.

>The adoption of paper was what really set things in motion in Europe, the Renaissance.

The idea that there was a Renaissance at all is dubious. Paper was certainly a step up from velum. But It would have been much better for everyone if we could just have used papyrus continuously.

Re: Why didn't the Romans contribute much to mathematics?

#146

Post by mjw1007 »

yesenadam wrote: post #133
mdemare wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That text is over 1000 years old. This is Shakespeare, from 1599: Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it. Hardly foreign

That's a modernised version! Because the original isn't easy to read, I guess. Punctuation, spelling, letterforms, the alphabet, have all changed since then. Pronunciation too. The original is something like this ('f' is the closest I can get to the old 's'): Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears: I come to bury Cæfar , not to praife him: The euill that men do, liues after them, The good is oft enterred with…

I think these days it should be OK to assume that people's browsers will render a long s directly: « praiſe ».

Re: Why didn't the Romans contribute much to mathematics?

#147

Post by kgwgk »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #131
sk5t wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's this about "Rome isn’t Western Europe"--have you consulted a map of the Roman empire?

Have you looked at the population spread of the Roman Empire? Rome had people, the rest of the empire was predominantly to the East/South. Rome was Mediterranean, not Western European.

What is your definition of “Western European” precisely?

https://aaron7roberts.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/roman_empi...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Roman_Empi... also shows larger populations in the “Latin West” than in the “Greek East”.

Re: Why didn't the Romans contribute much to mathematics?

#148

Post by goto11 »

kennywinker wrote: post #20
steve19 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but the Dark Age specifically refers to Western Europe, in much the same way the disastrous impact of the Mongol Empire on Islamic scholarship, for example the burning of libraries during or after the Siege of Baghdad, barely touched Western Europe. Chances are the Mongols destroyed some advanced mathematics that took centuries to rediscover.

The dark ages simply refers to the loss of texts. There are few surviving texts from that period, so it is “dark”. Later the term was re-branded to mean “bad time when no new science was done” but that’s a viewpoint that doesn’t fit the facts. Source (a very enjoyable read at that!): https://going-medieval.com/2017/05/26/theres-no-such-thing-a...

It is actually the other way around. The original meaning by Petrarch was not about the lack of historical source material. He did mean "bad/ignorant times".

Re: Why didn't the Romans contribute much to mathematics?

#149

Post by [deleted] »

asveikau wrote: post #70
BalinKing wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we put ethnicity ahead of national origin America can’t claim anything to its name. Period. It's silly to put ethnicity ahead of national origin, though, since one of America's biggest qualities it that it is a melting pot. This feels like saying "If we put learning curve ahead of type safety Haskell can't claim anything to its name. Period." It's true, but kinda vacuous.

But that particular super-famous German who lived in Princeton, NJ is also recognized as a German physicist. To say he was already quite accomplished when he left Europe would be an understatement. Personally, I think if an immigrant of descendant of immigrants invents something prominent, it is fair for both countries to be proud of the accomplishment, and share that enthusiasm. It doesn't, or shouldn't hurt anyone.…

[deleted]

Re: Why didn't the Romans contribute much to mathematics?

#150

Post by ghaff »

breck wrote: post #78
Chathamization wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, there definitely seems to have been a large decline in population, economic output, political cohesion, urbanization, record keeping, trade, etc., in much of the former Roman world following the fifth/sixth century. I suppose it's a value judgement on whether one considers that a "bad time."

Curious if you have any sources? I've never seen a data driven case that such a thing as the "dark ages" ever happened.

Another source, in addition to the one cited by Keysh, is Social Development by Ian Morris which goes into some more depth on the data he used in Why the West Rules--for Now.

http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/~lyamane/ianmorris.pdf

Across a wide set of measures, there was a significant decline of the West after the fall of the Roman Empire.

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