The Revolution of the “the Reason”

Mathematics, with its tons of uses and applications, most of us haven’t even bothered querying how it came to be. The reason why we were able to live and survive in our physical world has always been the provision Mathematics has given us.

The first steps of our mathematical journey were taken by the ancient cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece were reminisced in the first episode.  Now in this second episode, after ancient Greece sank and mathematical advancement halted in the west, the east was able to continue their exploration of mathematical breakthroughs without recognition that ultimately changed the world. These untold stories of the east that improved the west gave birth to the revolution of ‘the reason’ in the modern world.

The expedition to the east again led by the host Dr. Marcus de Sautoy began in China. His opening act was kind of exaggerated but this made it humorous. Here, one of my favorite wonders of the world, the Great Wall of China, was shown. It was made for ten thousand years and stretches for thousands of miles. It’s a defensive wall made in 220 BC to protect their empire from invaders. During the construction of the wall, the ancient Chinese were able to learn calculations like angles of elevation, distances, amount of material, etc. This was the onset of the rise of mathematics forming imperial China.

Ancient Chinese mathematics was an extremely simple number system which laid the foundation on how we count today. Chinese mathematicians use small bamboo rods if they would want to know the sum. These rods symbolize the numbers one to nine. They were placed in columns where each column represented units, tens, hundreds, thousands and so on giving rise to decimal place value system. This is very similar to the one we are using today. What is more interesting is that they see odd numbers as male and even numbers as female. They made my favorite puzzle game soduku!

Mathematics has also been useful in the running of the emperor’s court. The calendar and the movement of the planets were the topmost influence of the emperor. So astronomers were really supported in the imperial court and they are always mathematicians. What is funny is that mathematics gave the emperor a system for his affairs called the geometric progression. Mathematics, as all of the other civilizations, was also used for trade.

He then went southwest of China, India, where like the Chinese the Indians discovered the benefits of the decimal value system. They said that the Indians learned the system from ancient Chinese merchants but we don’t know how they really came up with their number system. Indians transformed zero into a number that made sense that is used for calculation and investigation. It was guessed that the form zero came from when a stone is removed from the soil representing the movement from something to nothing. Nothingness, for them, is the ultimate goal for humanity.

The Indians were the ones who discovered negative numbers and incorporated them with debts. Brahama Gupta, their most famous mathematician, discovered this. They also gave another way of solving quadratic equations that is equations with numbers to the power of two. Quadratic equations for them always have two solutions, one of which could be negative. Interestingly, they use colors to represent unknowns equations that lead to x’s and y’s. Indian mathematicians were responsible for fundamental discoveries in the theory of trigonometry. Trigonometry acts like a dictionary in converting geometry into numbers and back.

His went next was in the Middle East. The teachings of Prophet Mohammad inspired a vast Islamic empire. Muslim scholars were the ones who translated mathematics of other civilizations. However, they are not contented on only translating other people’s work so they made mathematics of their own. They used mathematics to know the requirements of their God—the time of prayer and the direction of the mecca to pray towards.

The Muslims were the ones who discovered the Hindu Arabic numerals which are now used all over the world. They also found algebra which came from the book containing calculations by restoration or reduction. Algebra is the grammar on how numbers work and the patterns on their behavior.

His last stop was Europe. Fibonacci, their famous mathematician, developed a new number system that is better compared to other systems like the Roman Numerals system. He discovered the Fibonacci sequence.

The video was very long. I’m quite biased with what I focused more. I’m really interested on how the ancient Chinese understood mathematics and how they applied it to their everyday lives.

Eastern mathematics has been a major contributor in mathematics that we use nowadays. It was the foundation on making our life easier if understood.