Unrecognized Tale of the East

                This documentary was another episode in unraveling the mysteries and origins of Mathematics. It ventures off through Ancient China, India, the Middle East and ends in Europe. Along with the declining of the ancient Greek civilization, the development of Mathematics went for a pause. However, despite this unfortunate event, on the other side of the world, Math was ascending to greater heights.   

                The story starts off with the narration of Marcus du Sautoy about ancient China, particularly the Great Wall. It was a vast, defensive wall which served as a protection of the empire but in order to build this, it required great engineering. The ancient Chinese made use of calculations for angles and distances to create this wall. Math served as a tool in the construction of Imperial China.

                The Chinese made use of bamboo rods for counting and representing numbers. They had a decimal place value system consisting of ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, etc. This allowed calculations to be easier. However, in writing numbers, this decimal system was not used because it was merely for calculations and this posed a problem because it was complicated to use symbols for numbers. Even the importance of zero was not recognized. For them, zero was just nothing and that it only served as a blank space or a place holder which made it even more complicated for writing symbols for numbers.

The Chinese also viewed Math with a cosmic significance and even until today. Numbers seemed to always have represented something and the Chinese believed that mathematical patterns were magical. There was also a calendar in the emperor’s palace because this was the basis of his schedule and of course, the court had astronomers and they were mathematicians because of their knowledge on astronomical patterns, calculating the movement of planets, etc.

Another mathematical idea was about geometric progression which was useful for the emperor to sleep with all of his women in the harem. Math was very important because it helped in taxations, weights, measurements and money and to aid in the problems of society, the Chinese people came up with ideas on how to solve equations, deduce unknowns from  given information and develop these for application on different situations. With this, they have also discovered quadratic equations and used them to solve equations even up to the power of 10. This only tells us that the East had already advanced compared to Europe which has not discovered solving equations until the 19^th century.

                But the problem with the Math in China was that they only made approximations and Math was an exact Science and it needed exact solutions to the problems. The next civilization addressed that problem and their breakthrough has indeed brought math to a higher level. This was the Indian civilization and they have discovered the decimal system in 3^rd century A.D. They perfected the system and this allowed Math to be dubbed as a universal language. The Hindu-Arabic numerals were developed along with that number missing in the other civilizations. It was recognized by the Indians and this number was zero. They transformed that notion of zero as just a place holder or a blank space into a number which made sense for calculations which paved the way in revolutionizing Math. For the Indians, nothingness and eternity were important because the universe came from nothing which embraced the void.

They have also presented the concept of negative numbers and that quadratic equations had two solutions, one of which was a negative number. In addition to those, the Indians have translated geometry to numbers and that new concept is what we call today as Trigonometry. This allowed astronomers to measure the distances between the earth, sun and moon and even the size of the earth.

Another concept was also discovered in which adding up infinitely many numbers smaller than the former number you can reach a desired number. They made sense of the impossible by conceiving the idea of infinity.

Lastly, even two hundred years before Europe actually studied about what pi was, Madhava already acquired its exact value but he was not credited for it because the Europeans claimed it to be theirs.

                Then, it trailed off to the 7^th century where a new empire had risen in the Middle East. This was the time when the Islamic belief spread. The empire revolved around an intellectual culture which enabled the rise of the Great Library in Baghdad, spreading different branches of knowledge including of course, Mathematics. The Muslim scholars collected ancient texts for them to create a math of their own. Algebra was their most prized discovery. They have found the missing links to quadratic equations of different sorts.

                Five-hundred years later, cubic equations were then studied and took place in Italy. Europeans brought the Hindu-Arabic numerals to the West and even though it was not accepted at first, eventually, it flourished. It was also in Italy where the Fibonacci sequence was highlighted and was entitled to be “Nature’s favourite number” because whenever there was growth and nature, the Fibonacci sequence would also be present. In this time, Tartaglia, a great mathematician, although not so famous, uncovered the cubic equations but his discoveries were credited to Cardano.

                The documentary was certainly an eye-opener for me because I did not really know a lot about the history of Math. I have heard about Western names that were famous for their own mathematical contributions but little did I know that some of these were not actually the ones who started them because according to the film, the Easterners have certainly learned and formulated mathematical concepts long before the people of the West were even born. This film should be shown to more people in order for them to be informed about the true story behind Mathematics.