The Babylonians: Cortez, Reynaldo Jr. C BSED Math

Cortez, Reynaldo Jr.
C
BSED Math
The Babylonians
- Grotefend believes the character for 10 originally to have been the picture of two hands, as held in prayer, the
palms being pressed together, the fingers close to each other, but the thumbs thrust out.
- Early Sumerians were the inventors of the cuneiform writing.
- Sumerian inscriptions disclose the use, not only of the above decimal system, but also of a sexagesimal one. The
latter was used chiefly in constructing tables for weights and measures.
- Greek geometer Hypsicles and the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemæus borrowed the sexagesimal notation of
fractions from the Babylonians and introduced it into Greece.
- Cantor offers the following theory: At first the Babylonians reckoned the year at 360 days. This led to the
division of the circle into 360 degrees, each degree representing the daily amount of the supposed yearly
revolution of the sun around the earth.
- Now they were, very probably, familiar with the fact that the radius can be applied to its circumference as a
chord 6 times, and that each of these chords subtends an arc measuring exactly 60 degrees. Fixing their
attention upon these degrees, the division into 60 parts may have suggested itself to them. Thus, when greater
precision necessitated a subdivision of the degree, it was partitioned into 60 minutes. In this way the
sexagesimal notation may have originated,
- Iamblichus attributes to them also a knowledge of proportion, and even the invention of the so-called musical
proportion.
- Babylonian calculation of the new and full moon, and have identified by calculations the Babylonian names of
the planets, and of the twelve zodiacal signs and twenty-eight normal stars.
The Egyptians
- The Egyptians built the pyramids at a very early period.
- Plato in Phædrus says: “At the Egyptian city of Naucratis there was a famous old god whose name was Theuth;
the bird which is called the Ibis was sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and
calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters.”
- Aristotle says that mathematics had its birth in Egypt, because there the priestly class had the leisure needful for
the study of it.
- Geometry, in particular, is said by Herodotus, Diodorus, Diogenes Laertius, Iamblichus, and other ancient
writers to have originated in Egypt.
- King [Sesostris] divided the land among all Egyptians so as to give each one a quadrangle of equal size and to
draw from each his revenues, by imposing a tax to be levied yearly. But every one from whose part the river tore
away anything, had to go to him and notify what had happened; he then sent the overseers, who had to
measure out by how much the land had become smaller, in order that the owner might pay on what was left, in
proportion to the entire tax imposed. In this way, it appears to me, geometry originated, which passed thence to
Hellas.
- In geometry the forte of the Egyptians lay in making constructions and determining areas. The area of an
isosceles triangle, of which the sides measure 10 ruths and the base 4 ruths, was erroneously given as 20 square
ruths, or half the product of the base by one side. The area of an isosceles trapezoid is found, similarly, by
multiplying half the sum of the parallel sides by one of the non-parallel sides. The area of a circle is found by
deducting from the diameter 1 9 of its length and squaring the remainder. Here π is taken = (16 9 )2 = 3.1604...,
a very fair approximation.
- Harpedonaptæ, applied to Egyptian geometers, means “rope-stretchers,” would point to the conclusion that the
Egyptian, like the Indian and Chinese geometers, constructed a right triangle upon a given line, by stretching
around three pegs a rope consisting of three parts in the ratios 3 : 4 : 5, and thus forming a right triangle.
- Champollion, Young, and their successors: The symbols used were the following: for 1, for 10, for 100, for 1000,
for 10,000, for 100,000, for 1,000,000, for 10,000,000.[3] The symbol for 1 represents a vertical staff; that for
10,000 a pointing finger; that for 100,000 a burbot; that for 1,000,000, a man in astonishment. The principle
employed was the additive.
- Herodotus makes an important statement concerning the mode of computing among the Egyptians. He says
that they “calculate with pebbles by moving the hand from right to left, while the Hellenes move it from left to
right.” Herein we recognise again that instrumental method of figuring so extensively used by peoples of
antiquity.
- In manipulating fractions, the Babylonians kept the denominators (60) constant. The Romans likewise kept
them constant, but equal to 12. The Egyptians and Greeks, on the other hand, kept the numerators constant,
and dealt with variable denominators.
- Ahmes used the term “fraction” in a restricted sense, for he applied it only to unit-fractions, or fractions having
unity for the numerator. It was designated by writing the denominator and then placing over it a dot. Fractional
values which could not be expressed by any one unit-fraction were expressed as the sum of two or more of
them. Thus, he wrote 1/3 1/15 in place of 2/5.
- Ahmes proceeds to the solution of equations of one unknown quantity. The unknown quantity is called ‘hau’ or
heap. Thus the problem, “heap, its 1 7, its whole, it makes 19,” i.e. x/7 + x = 19. In this case, the solution is as
follows: 8x/7 = 19; x/7 = 2 1/4 1/8; x = 16 1/2 1/8. It thus appears that the beginnings of algebra are as ancient
as those of geometry.
The Greeks
The Ionic School
- To Thales of Miletus (640–546b.c.),one of the “seven wise men,” and the founder of the Ionic school, falls the
honour of having introduced the study of geometry into Greece.
- Plutarch declares that Thales soon excelled his masters, and amazed King Amasis by measuring the heights of
the pyramids from their shadows.
- According to Plutarch, this was done by considering that the shadow cast by a vertical staff of known length
bears the same ratio to the shadow of the pyramid as the height of the staff bears to the height of the pyramid.
This solution presupposes aknowledge of proportion, and the Ahmes papyrus actually shows that the rudiments
of proportion were known to the Egyptians.
- According to Diogenes Laertius, the pyramids were measured by Thales in a different way; viz. by finding the
length of the shadow of the pyramid at the moment when the shadow of a staff was equal to its own length.
- The Eudemian Summary ascribes to Thales the invention of the theorems on the equality of vertical angles, the
equality of the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle, the bisection of a circle by any diameter, and the
congruence of two triangles having a side and the two adjacent angles equal respectively.
- The theorem that all angles inscribed in a semicircle are right angles is attributed by some ancient writers to
Thales, by others to Pythagoras.
- It has been inferred that he knew the sum of the three angles of a triangle to be equal to two right angles, and
the sides of equiangular triangles to be proportional.
- Thales may be said to have created the geometry of lines, essentially abstract in its character, while the
Egyptians studied only the geometry of surfaces and the rudiments of solid geometry, empirical in their
character.
- The two most prominent pupils of Thales were Anaximander (b. 611 b.c.) and Anaximenes (b. 570 b.c.).
- Of Anaxagoras, a pupil of Anaximenes, and the last philosopher of the Ionic school, we know little, except that,
while in prison, he passed his time attempting to square the circle.
- Approximations to π had been made by the Chinese, Babylonians, Hebrews, and Egyptians. But the invention of
a method to find its exact value, is the knotty problem which has engaged the attention of many minds from the
time of Anaxagoras down to our own.
- About the time of Anaxagoras, but isolated from the Ionic school, flourished Œnopides of Chios. Proclus
ascribes to him the solution of the following problems: From a point without, to draw a perpendicular to a given
line, and to draw an angle on a line equal to a given angle.
-
The School of Pythagoras

- Pythagoras: He settled at Croton, and founded the famous Pythagorean school. This was not merely an academy
for the teaching of philosophy, mathematics, and natural science, but it was a brotherhood, the members of
which were united for life. This brotherhood had observances approaching masonic peculiarity.
- The democratic party in Lower Italy revolted and destroyed the buildings of the Pythagorean school. Pythagoras
fled to Tarentum and thence to Metapontum, where he was murdered.
- Pythagoras raised mathematics to the rank of a science. Arithmetic was courted by him as fervently as
geometry. In fact, arithmetic is the foundation of his philosophic system.
- His geometry was connected closely with his arithmetic. He was especially fond of those geometrical relations
which admitted of arithmetical expression.
- The geometry of the Pythagoreans is much concerned with areas. To Pythagoras is ascribed the important
theorem that the square on the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other
two sides. He had probably learned from the Egyptians the truth of the theorem in the special case when the
sides are 3, 4, 5, respectively.
- The theorem on the sum of the three angles of a triangle, presumably known to Thales, was proved by the
Pythagoreans after the manner of Euclid.
- They demonstrated also that the plane about a point is completely filled by six equilateral triangles, four
squares, or three regular hexagons, so that it is possible to divide up a plane into figures of either kind.
- From the equilateral triangle and the square arise the solids, namely the tetraedron, octaedron, icosaedron, and
the cube.
- Later another regular solid was discovered, namely the dodecaedron, which, in absence of a fifth element, was
made to represent the universe itself.
- Iamblichus states that Hippasus, a Pythagorean, perished in the sea, because he boasted that he first divulged
“the sphere with the twelve pentagons.” The star-shaped pentagram was used as a symbol of recognition by the
Pythagoreans, and was called by them Health.
- Pythagoras called the sphere the most beautiful of all solids, and the circle the most beautiful of all plane
figures.
- According to Eudemus, the Pythagoreans invented the problems concerning the application of areas, including
the cases of defect and excess, as in Euclid, VI. 28, 29.
- They were also familiar with the construction of a polygon equal in area to a given polygon and similar to
another given polygon.
- Philolaus wrote a book on the Pythagorean doctrines. By him were first given to the world the teachings of the
Italian school, which had been kept secret for a whole century.
- The brilliant Archytas of Tarentum(428–347b.c.), known as a great statesman and general, and universally
admired for his virtues, was the only great geometer among the Greeks when Plato opened his school.
- He also found a very ingenious mechanical solution to the problem of the duplication of the cube. His solution
involves clear notions on the generation of cones and cylinders.
- The Sophists acquired geometry from Pythagorean sources. Plato bought the works of Philolaus, and had a
warm friend in Archytas.
The Sophists
- The teachers were called Sophists, or “wise men.”
- They also taught geometry, astronomy, and philosophy.
- The home of mathematics among the Greeks was first in the Ionian Islands, then in Lower Italy, and during the
time now under consideration, at Athens.
- Nearly all their discoveries were made in connection with their innumerable attempts to solve the following
three famous problems:—
(1) To trisect an arc or an angle. (2) To “double the cube,” i.e. to find a cube whose volume is double that of a
given cube. (3)To“square the circle,” i.e.to find a square or some other rectilinear figure exactly equal in area
to a given circle.
- Hippias of Elis: He failed in effecting the trisection by means of a ruler and compass only.
- Proclus mentions a man, Hippias, presumably Hippias of Elis, as the inventor of a transcendental curve which
served to divide an angle not only into three, but into any number of equal parts.
- This same curve was used later by Deinostratus and others for the quadrature of the circle. On this account it is
called the quadratrix.
- Hippocrates of Chios (about 430 b.c.), a talented mathematician, but otherwise slow and stupid, was the first to
show that the problem could be reduced to finding two mean proportional between a given line and another
twice as long.
- Numbers were conceived as discontinuous, while magnitudes were continuous.
- Euclid that “incommensurable magnitudes do not have the same ratio as numbers.”
- Hippocrates added to his fame by writing a geometrical text-book, called the Elements.
- The Sophist Antiphon, a contemporary of Hippocrates, introduced the process of exhaustion for the purpose of
solving the problem of the quadrature. He did himself credit by remarking that by inscribing in a circle a square,
and on its sides erecting isosceles triangles with their vertices in the circumference, and on the sides of these
triangles erecting new triangles, etc., one could obtain a succession of regular polygons of 8, 16, 32, 64 sides,
and so on, of which each approaches nearer to the circle than the previous one, until the circle is finally
exhausted.
- Bryson of Heraclea, a contemporary of Antiphon, advanced the problem of the quadrature considerably by
circumscribing polygons at the same time that he inscribed polygons.
- Antiphon seems to have believed it possible, by continually doubling the sides of an inscribed polygon, to obtain
a polygon coinciding with the circle.
- Zeno argues that Achilles could not overtake a tortoise; for while he hastened to the place where the tortoise
had been when he started, the tortoise crept some distance ahead, and while Achilles reached that second spot,
the tortoise again moved forward a little, and so on. Thus the tortoise was always in advance of Achilles. Such
arguments greatly confounded Greek geometers. No wonder they were deterred by such paradoxes from
introducing the idea of infinity into their geometry.
- Democritus of Abdera (about 460–370 b.c.), a pupil of Anaxagoras, a friend of Philolaus, and an admirer of the
Pythagoreans.
- Plato objected to calling a point a “geometrical fiction.” He defined a point as the “beginning of a line” or as “an
indivisible line,” and a line as “length without breadth.” He called the point, line, surface, the ‘boundaries’ of the
line, surface, solid, respectively.
- Aristotle refers to Plato the axiom that “equals subtracted from equals leave equals.”
- One of the greatest achievements of Plato and his school is the invention of analysis as a method of proof.
- Menæchmus, an associate of Plato and pupil of Eudoxus, invented the conic sections, which, in course of only a
century, raised geometry to the loftiest height which it was destined to reach during antiquity.
- Menæchmus cut three kinds of cones, the ‘right-angled,’ ‘acute-angled,’ and ‘obtuse-angled,’ by planes at right
angles to a side of the cones, and thus obtained the three sections which we now call the parabola, ellipse, and
hyperbola.
- Eudoxus: has been called the father of scientific astronomical observation.
- Eudoxus added much to the knowledge of solid geometry. He proved, says Archimedes, that a pyramid is
exactly one-third of a prism, and a cone one-third of a cylinder, having equal base and altitude.
- Aristotle (384–322 b.c.), the systematiser of deductive logic, though not a professed mathematician, promoted
the science of geometry by improving some of the most difficult definitions.
The First Alexandrian School

- Ptolemy created the University of Alexandria.
- The term ‘axiom’ was used by Proclus, but not by Euclid.

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Cortez, Reynaldo Jr.

The School of Pythagoras

The First Alexandrian School

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