An untold story

               

Mathematics is the pivot on which human life depends- a line from the second installment of The Story of Maths tells it all. We have learned that using mathematics dates back from the days of the Egyptians who calculated the flooding of the river Nile to the Greeks who loved proving. The story pretty much ended with the fall of the Greek and the rise of the Roman Empire. But that was for the west. The people of the East also had their fair share of contribution- and that’s an understatement.

The Great Wall of China isn't called great for no reason. As limited as my knowledge goes, it is the only man-made structure seen from the outer space. It’s been made possible by the sweat and blood (quite literally there) of a number of the Chinese people and of course, mathematics. From the great wall, to running the empire, to sleeping the way through a vast number of women in the emperor’s harem, mathematics took a notch higher in the land of China. The next mathematical breakthrough came from a country just southwest of it, India. The Indians refined their number system perfectly which made it the ancestor of our numbers today. Their system ranked one of the greatest intellectual innovations of all time. Perhaps the most important contribution of the Indian number system is the transformation of zero from being a mere placeholder to a number that made sense in its own right.

The movie revealed some names worth remembering. I’d say these brilliant minds deserve some credit, don’t they? Brahmagupta proved some of the essential properties of zero. Bhaskara II completed these properties by introducing the idea of infinity. Madhava discovered the exact value of pi by going back and forth the number line.  Al-Khwarizmi made algebra and proposed the efficiency of the Hindu- Arabic numerical system. The west started to trade with the east and with it came the said numeric system. I hope all those names didn’t bore you because here comes another one. It was a man named Fibonacci who promoted the new number system to Italy but it was detested at first because of some trust issues. Common sense prevailed, though and now we all use the Hindu- Arabic numerical system.

                Mathematics of the east indeed reached dynamic new heights which gave birth to the modern era. Unfortunately, I believe, it wasn’t rightly credited. I can say that because all of these things I learned just now. The movie was humble enough, knowing that it’s western, as to accept that mathematics came to drastic developments from the east. This documentary unravels the mystery on how the modern era came about. I personally find it more interesting than the previous one probably because this one’s closer to home and thus, more relatable to. Whichever side of the world it came from, it took gradual changes to finally have that universal language we all needed--mathematics.