The Great Wall Between the East and the West

            Mathematics can be compared to a traveler. He has been to several places. He has seen the beauty of each. He has taken pictures of them with him. Yes, he has been in an amazing journey so far. What makes this journey special is that he has left his own mark in each place that will be remembered forever.

            In the first part of the documentary entitled “The Story of Maths”, I have been exposed to the civilizations of Mesopotamia, Babylonian and Egyptian and how Math has been part of them. They were said to have established the strong foundation of Mathematical concepts first. However, after watching the second part of the documentary, I realized that I was completely wrong. It started not in the West but in the East.

            In the construction of The Great Wall of China, the concept of number system was used. What’s interesting is similar to what is being taught in school nowadays. They recognized the concept of place value. However, it is different when written. They use symbols as representation which is somehow limits the numbers that could be expressed. They also do not recognize the number “0”. This concept still needed some evolution and improvement to do.

            It was also in China where the methods of solving equations started. This did not appear in the west until the 19^th century. They were also the ones to figure out the methods of solving cubic equations first. However, the exact value cannot be attained, only the approximation. It was Isaac Newton who figured this out not later than 17^th century.  In addition, the concept of Chinese remainder theorem was also used in internet cryptography. It can be put in this way: It was the East people who have established the concepts while the West people have developed them. We must thank them for we are able to have access to all these social networking sites and blog sites because of the concepts they have established.

            The concept of the number system in China has reached India through the Chinese merchants. However, this was developed by the Indians by discovering the new number, 0. They were also the first to discover negative numbers. They are very innovative. They don’t just limit their knowledge. They treat numbers as abstract entities. They treat them as if they have their own lives because they really do.

            Numbers have certain behaviors. They have a certain language spoken and a certain grammar being followed. This is another concept being studied in Baghdad. They believe that numbers are like the words in a poem. They rhyme beautifully. It’s like this poem have been sent to the world for its meaning to be decoded by different people and different civilizations.

            For me, it doesn’t matter whether Math started in the east or in the west. What matters is that Math was to destroy the walls separating different civilizations and has been able to bridge gaps among them. He was able to leave his mark in his journey. It was just left for us to decode them.