Bedtime Story
To Understand Formalization of Mathematics One Needs to Understand How Mathematical Notation Came to Be
The story of mathematical notation is as pleasurable a narrative
as the story of mathematics itself.
Obviously they are both interconnected.
The current mathematical notation that is used internationally is
anywhere between one hundred to five hundred years old.
Most popular books on science and mathematics convey the feeling
that the modern world of science and mathematics started from the Greeks.
I am not sure why such a strong bias exists towards this, but may
be the entire Western world subconsciously holds the belief that they owe their
supremacy to the Greeks.
This belief that the Greeks are the originators and pioneers of
the modern philosophy is obviously far from true since the first prototype
humans existed in Africa and lot of civilizations existed from that time since
the Greeks.
We are talking of a time span of at least 100,000 years and maybe
more.
As much as we are indebted to the Greeks and the Hindus and Arabs
for what they gifted the modern world, the Greeks in turn too must have been
thankful to the civilizations that came before them, namely Egyptians and the
Phoenicians (of the fertile crescent) who rose and fell before them.
In fact, certain rocks that go back dating to 70,000 years ago
found in the Blombos Cave of South Africa have engravings of geometric patterns
in them.
It is hard to say what kind of mathematical thinking a Ramanujan
or a Gauss of that period would have had, but there certainly something was
going on mathematically speaking.
Somewhere around 35,000 years ago there is evidence to show that
humans in Africa made attempts to quantify time.
Again in a bone that is a fibula of a baboon that was found in
Ishango, somewhere close to the border of modern Uganda and Congo, there are
columns of notches that was probably a primitive form of numerical system.
It has been dated to about 20,000 years.
Some claim it has an early reference to prime numbers though that
seems debatable and vehemently arguable.
It, most likely, had to be some kind of a record of a natural phenomenon
occurring periodically, may be it be the lunar months or menstrual cycles of a
specific woman.
It was only in 3400 BC in Mesopotamia that we come across firm
evidence of established numerical system.
By this time and gradually later arithmetic must have become a
necessity as a tool in trading to count money and basic book-keeping.
Geometry would have become essential to the Mesopotamians, the
Sumerians, the later the Hindus and Egyptians for the purpose of land
surveying.
So the early arithmetic and geometry arouse out of sheer need to
solve the real world problems.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
The Ishango Bone is more than 20,000 years old found near the Semliki River near the border of Congo and Uganda
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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