61–70 of 82 posts
copied/stolen from India/Hindus
Not to forget that things can also be invented/discovered more than once independently.
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Colonized Indians need to take control of their history like the Chinese did. Otherwise the appropriators will continue to have a field day.
This is a 2000-year-precolonial issue though.
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This is close to what I was taught. I don’t know ancient Greek, so I wonder if that language draws a distinction between singular and plural in the way “the author” of Elements is structured. Fwiw, I do recall that Pythagoras seems to have forbidden written records, so what survives are his followers’ notes, who apparently gave him singular credit where we might expect a collaboration.
> I don’t know ancient Greek, so I wonder if that language draws a distinction between singular and plural in the way “the author” of Elements is structured. I don't know what you mean by "in the way 'the author' of Elements is structured", but yes, Greek draws a distinction between singular and plural. (And dual, though to a lesser degree.)
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A lot of math theorems might have been stolen / 'appropriated' from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_school_of_astronomy_and...
The wiki article you link states 1) no direct evidence of a link or that their ideas were known beyond Kerala exists and 2) they might also have worked off ideas NY Islamic scholars. Really not sure what the specific claim or evidence you have is to give credit for 'many ideas' to this group.
Note that the "perhaps compiled in the 8th to 6th centuries BCE", while still older than Pythagoras, comes from dating of Indian texts by European indologists. These indologists were funded by then-colonial governments in a then-colonized India with a view to advance the biblical worldview that the universe is about 6000 years old [2], which any reasonable thinker now knows is pure hogwash [3]. So Indian texts are, in fact, probably a lot older. I believe that a now-decolonized India needs to pay closer attention to its history.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudhayana_sutras#Pythagorean_... [2] https://www.letu.edu/academics/arts-and-sciences/files/age-o... [3] https://www.nationalgeographic.org/topics/resource-library-a...
copied/stolen from India/Hindus
There is a huge swath of Indian comments here, claiming vaguely that all these are Indian ideas without any evidence to back this up. Would be curious to see some actual evidence. Not to forget that things can also be invented/discovered more than once independently.
Note that the "perhaps compiled in the 8th to 6th centuries BCE", while still older than Pythagoras, comes from dating of Indian texts by European indologists. These indologists were funded by then-colonial governments in a then-colonized India with a view to advance the biblical worldview that the universe is about 6000 years old [2], which any reasonable thinker now knows is pure hogwash [3]. So Indian texts are, in fact, probably a lot older. I believe that a now-decolonized India needs to pay closer attention to its history.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudhayana_sutras#Pythagorean_... [2] https://www.letu.edu/academics/arts-and-sciences/files/age-o... [3] https://www.nationalgeographic.org/topics/resource-library-a...
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This is a 2000-year-precolonial issue though.
My understanding is that some schools in India teach it as the "Pythagorean theorem" and others as the "Baudhayan theorem" - the choice of which term to use is definitely a colonial issue.
[1] https://www.letu.edu/academics/arts-and-sciences/files/age-o... [2] https://www.nationalgeographic.org/topics/resource-library-a...
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I think this is the most important point modern readers need to make. If we discover a proof earlier than Thales, regardless of whether it’s Greek, we might revise the discovery of trig. But this is about certain triples being used practically in Babylon (who recorded everything) without any recorded interest in the relationship between triples. Because Greeks first recorded the important part —- the proof —- I think…
> this is about certain triples being used practically in Babylon (who recorded everything) The difference isn't that Mesopotamia generated more records than other cultures. It's that Mesopotamian records become practically indestructible when burned. (This didn't help much in Babylon itself, which didn't burn.)
WRT Babylon, I don’t know how many tablets are left undeciphered. This article (or a comment) mentions the famous cosecant tablet. We have the tools to fill in the gaps for their language and math. I think extrapolating past that is at least as ahistorical as speculating about what was lost at Alexandria.
Yes, but the point is the approach to proof (proving this for all cases) that represented a paradigm shift in mathematics, largely attributed to Thales.
It is also possible to discover mathematical truths without providing a formal proof. Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan "independently compiled nearly 3,900 results (mostly identities and equations). Many were completely novel; his original and highly unconventional results, such as the Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and inspired a vast amount of further research. Of his thousands of results, all but a dozen or two have now been proven correct." [3]
The mathematical statement versus rigorous proof was also a cultural difference: "Their collaboration was a clash of different cultures, beliefs, and working styles. In the previous few decades the foundations of mathematics had come into question and the need for mathematically rigorous proofs recognised. Hardy was an atheist and an apostle of proof and mathematical rigour, whereas Ramanujan was a deeply religious man who relied very strongly on his intuition and insights." [3]
To the highly-material Western mind, Hindus can be a little weird sometimes: "A deeply religious Hindu, Ramanujan credited his substantial mathematical capacities to divinity, and said the mathematical knowledge he displayed was revealed to him by his family goddess Namagiri Thayar. He once said, "An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God."" [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudhayana_sutras#Pythagorean_... [2] http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMT668/EMT668.Student.Folders/Hea... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
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For what it's worth Wikipedia has him as a real person living 570 – c. 495 BC, son of Mnesarchus, a gem-engraver on the island of Samos, who travelled to Croton about 530 BC and set up some kind of school there.
It might be the mathematical equivalent of Winston Churchill... a person who definitely existed, but who didn’t say 90% of the famous bon mots attributed to him. It might have been that if you wanted your ideas to spread you had to attribute them to “Pythagoras.”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t know ancient Greek, so I wonder if that language draws a distinction between singular and plural in the way “the author” of Elements is structured. I don't know what you mean by "in the way 'the author' of Elements is structured", but yes, Greek draws a distinction between singular and plural. (And dual, though to a lesser degree.)
I mean the structure of the way later writers refer to Euclid. Apparently, from Wikipedia, "ὁ στοιχειώτης" but I hope an improved discussion/potential rabbithole occurs if we know whether that unambiguously translates to one male author.
But it doesn't mean the author was one male. Lots of texts have attributed authorship. The Homeric Hymns are attributed to "Homer". The Gospel of Luke is attributed to "Luke".