Answer the following questions:
1) What ancient mathematics can you think of? What were their achievements? Which was the most developed?
2) What mathematical problems were studied by ancient civilizations?
3) Can you name any mathematicians of the ancient world?
Reading
Read the text and check your answers.
History of Mathematics (Part I)
The Origin of Mathematics
Like every other aspect of human invention, mathematics has its origin, and its origin is based upon needs of mankind. The particular needs are those arising from the wants of society. The more complex the society, the more complex the needs. The primitive tribe has little mathematical needs beyond counting. The complex society aimed at building great temples, mustering conquering armies, or managing large capital assets has logistical problems that demand mathematics to solve.
Egyptian and Babylonian Mathematics
Egyptian mathematics, despite the hieroglyphic inscribed on hundreds of temples comes from two papyri containing collections of mathematical problems with their solutions. These papyri consist mostly of applied problems written for study by the young student. Through them we see the kinds of problems of interest to the Egyptian builders and empire makers. Many are logistic problems of the type needed to feed a large army or work force. What we do not see is any sort of codification of ideas into principles.
Babylonian mathematics, in many ways more sophisticated, was also a technology in the service of the state. Though there is some evidence of deep investigations in astronomy in later, Hellenistic times, the early mathematical evidence is very much applied. However, the Babylonian counting was positional, and this is regarded as one of the greatest inventions of mankind. It permitted the Babylonians to create indefinitely large numbers with great economy of writing. We also see evidence of tables to solve nonlinear equations and a rather elegant method for computing the square root of two.
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