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Where do correct ideas come from?

Where do correct ideas come from?. Where did Greek mathematics come from?. Rhind mathematical papyrus (13th cent. BCE).

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Where do correct ideas come from?

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  1. Where do correct ideas come from? Where did Greek mathematics come from?

  2. Rhind mathematical papyrus (13th cent. BCE) ‘it would seem difficult to argue that before the second half of the fourth century B.C. any aspect of Greek “science” - with the possible exception of axiomatic mathematics - was more advanced than that of Mesopotamia or Egypt’ (Bernal 1992)

  3. Greek money (Aegina, drachma, c. 600 BCE) Greek mathematics(Thales, 6th century BCE) ‘We reason that this [abstraction] could result only through the generalisation intrinsic in the monetary commensuration of commodity values promoted by coinage.’ (Sohn-Rethel, ‘Intellectual and Manual Labour’, p.102.)

  4. History - from the National Curriculum1. Pupils should be taught to:a) place events, people and changes into correct periods of time 4. Pupils should be taught: • how to find out about the events, people and changes studied from an appropriate range of sources of information Greek mathematics: what are the ‘correct periods?’ What are the ‘appropriate sources’?

  5. Papyrus with Euclid II.5 from Oxyrhynchus, c. 100 CE.

  6. Greek ‘demotic mathematics’: ostracon with survey results. Thebes, Egypt, 30 BCE-14 CE, from Fowler, plate 8. Some of transliteration appended.

  7. YBC 7243; the Babylonian ‘calculation’ of the diagonal.

  8. Eratosthenes’ ‘mesolabe’ or machine for doubling cubes - or cubical measure….

  9. The figure for Euclid I.35‘It may seem a great puzzle to those inexperienced in this sciencethat the parallelograms constructed on the same base should be equal to one another.’ (Proclus, cited in Fowler p. 280.)

  10. Hippocrates - quadrature of the lune. The beginning of ‘Greek mathematics’? • (Two very different shapes have the same ‘value’.)

  11. ‘Hence when all such inventions were already established, the sciences which do not aim at giving pleasure or at the necessities of life were discovered, and first in the places where men first began to have leisure. This is why the mathematical arts were founded in Egypt; for there the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure.’ (Aristotle, Metaphysics I,i.)

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