Unraveling the Stories of the East

         The journey of navigating the world of Mathematics has never ended and is still continually unmasking the events of the past that triggered today’s modern society. Different civilizations including Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece had contributed to the kind of society that we are living today. From the simplest inventions up to the advancements of technology, Math has always been involved in it. Without Mathematics, other disciplines will not possibly emerge because it is the strong foundation in building such.

           

         In the series, The Story of Maths the first episode began in the western civilizations. When the Greece fell and Egypt was conformed by the power of the Dark Ages, it was then that the eastern civilizations were seen in the picture. And this is what the second episode is all about -- The Genius of the East. Marcus du Sautoy, a Mathematics professor in the University of Oxford, explored the impressive beauty and unraveled the mystery of Mathematics.

          It all started in China where the people used decimal place value systems. And even though they do not have zeros, they have not encountered problems with it. They also had superstitious beliefs on numbers—referring a certain number might cause you for being fortunate or wretch; they have also developed a game system called the magic square which gave birth to our modern Sudoku. And of course, who would ever forget such astonishing accomplishments of engineering as the Great Wall. But the thing that struck me most was the time when the emperor had to sleep his way to a vast number of women he had in his harem for 15 nights. I was really in great awe and in such amazement. I pondered on how did he actually do that? The harem was actually based in a geometric progression. 

          In India, they had defined zero as a number itself because they believed in nothingness. This discovery is one of the highlights and greatest landmark in the field of Mathematics. They had also made an approximation of pi. Marcus du Sautoy scrutinized their understanding in negative numbers which is derived from the concept of “debt” as well as the idea of infinity/ infinite series.

         He then examined the new language of algebra as well as cubic equations in the mathematical developments in the Middle East. His expedition ended in Italy where the Fibonacci sequence introduced by Leonardo Fibonacci was known. Also, it is where he searched for the possible ways on how the knowledge of the East reached to the West.

          Indeed, the eastern civilizations were very creative and it is where the height of mathematical innovations progressed and the knowledge it has brought us influenced our modern world.