Professor Du Sautoy’s second
presentation on the history of mathematics “The Genius of The East” unfolded
the development of a more practical mathematics, greatly discovered by the
eastern civilization. Hence, the development of the number systems from
different culture shows how mathematics has become the spine in which human
life depends.
In his first quest on how and why math developed (The
language of the universe), he discovered the early yet less workable forms of
mathematics in the old civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia. However,
the second episode shows the turning point of the story in which eastern cultures
found out more efficient and practical ways to symbolize numerals, particularly,
the bamboo rods of China, the discovery of zero number in India and the Hindu-Arabic
numerals of Islamic Empire in which we now conveniently use.
Other remarkable math discoveries that street ahead of
Europe are China’s magic squares, geometric proportion, equations, the Chinese
remainder theorem that preceded practical internet cryptography and Chin’s
approximation method. Most of these Chinese discoveries were learnt way ahead
of the geniuses of Europe. India’s “Shunya” or the belief of nothingness
resulted to the discovery of zero. India also had the breakthrough of infinity
by dividing one by zero, the concept of debt led to idea of negative numbers,
the fundamental theory of trigonometry, and the précised value for Pi, discovered
two centuries earlier than Leibnitz. The intellectual curiosity plus the
assertion of the importance of knowledge in the Islamic Empire led to two major
discoveries: the Hindu-Arabic numerals that speed up calculations, which then
became the number of choice not only by the empire but by the world as a whole,
and Algebra, which became the “grammar” of modern mathematical language.
All of these mathematical discoveries provide a pattern
in which one can observe that the early civilizations are aiming to get away
from the strenuous and inconvenient old counting systems. A good example of
this is the adaptation of Hindu-Arabic numerals by the European culture.
Although it was initially banned because of some socio-cultural factors, the
need to be efficient and progressive pave the way to make the Roman numerals
inferior to Hindu-Arabic numerals. Hence, progress of eastern discoveries
continually develops as it was adopted and improved until the beginning of the
dark ages in Europe.
It is also interesting to observe the interrelationship
of these early societies and how it affected different mathematical discoveries.
The formation of the Hindu-Arabic numerals is a clear example of how one part
of a culture diffuses to the other. Although one of the initial intentions of
the Islamic Empire in creating the Hindu numerals is to create exclusivity or what
Du Sautoy stated as “a mathematics of their own”, it is clear that they have
adopted these numerals, including the concept of zero, from translating other
people’s mathematics, namely India. Hence, the diffusion of culture and
knowledge continues as the Hindu-Arabic numerals were adopted into the European
culture. Thus creating a greater impact as it is continually spreading all over
the world.
However, even though the content of episode is generally
educational, the way it was presented remains arguable. The technicalities of
the episode are a bit ineffective. It doesn’t maintain one’s attention as the
visuals and the audio do not coincide to relay a single message. Video clips
that do not directly associate to what du Sautoy’s statements are,
unfortunately, more prevalent in this episode compared to the first one. This
is drearier by default. Because of this shortcoming, the viewer’s recall to the
message of the episode would be weak and inadequate, unless it would be viewed
repeatedly, but then impractical. (Forgive me for being an avid critic of the
technical aspects; I’m a CommArts student by the way.)
But generally, the
main content satisfyingly shows that the eastern civilization indeed steered
the wheel of mathematical knowledge into a more advanced yet efficient and
practical level. As it gave birth to systems that speed up solving common mathematical
problems in the community, like in the field of Architecture, Engineering and
Economics, the modern world owes a lot from these contributing societies
because their discoveries are the predecessors of the knowledge and
technologies the humans are currently dependent of.
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