Mathematics on the East side of the Ancient World (The Story of Math 2)

While the second video installment was also about the math of the ancient civilizations, it was focused more on the Mathematics of the East, hence the subtitle of the video. The civilizations were those of the Chinese, Indian, and the Muslim. In the video it was shown that the ancient Chinese civilization was not just famous for the Great Wall of China, they were also known for the decimal place value system which is in use until today in modern mathematics. During their time, they used sticks to represent place values of ones, hundreds, tens, and so on. They had no concept of zero yet and there are certain numbers that they thought were related to good and bad luck. The number 4 was avoided for the believed bad luck it would bring. The number 8 on the other hand, was thought to bring good fortune to them. In this simple example of their belief, it shows how important the numbers to the ancient Chinese were. The numbers weren’t just merely tools used to count or measure anything. Numbers were as important as bringer or even the cause of good and bad luck. The ancient Chinese acknowledge the “power” that comes with the simple numbers. One remarkable person mentioned in the video was Emperor Yu who was sleeping with more than a hundred different women including the empress and slaves. It was also Emperor Yu who popularized Magic Square which is known until now. During the 13^th century, it was the Chinese civilization who initiated to make mathematics as a curriculum.

            On the other hand, the ancient Indian civilization was responsible for the kind of numerals we use today. If there’s anyone else we should be grateful for, it was the ancient Indians. They were also the ones who introduced the single number missing from the Chinese numerals – the zero. It was during the 9^th century when they put a distinction of zero. This was perhaps because, according to the video, the Indians had the concept of nothingness and eternity. Nothingness was then the “ultimate goal of humanity”. It was also the Indians who came up with the concept of infinity. They realized that 1  0 = ∞. Their contribution of the negative numbers was also remarkable and the discovery of these numbers could be from the debts that they had with each other. It was also the Indians who initiated the study of trigonometry, which was basically “translating geometry to numbers and back”. It was also them who discovered the accurate measure for π. They learned that “the smaller the fraction, the nearer…to 1.” We had to admit that all these contributions in math by the Indians were huge and if it weren’t for them we might have a hard time measuring the area of a circle, for example. The concept of π is a great help now especially for the engineers and architects. The Indian civilization was also the one who came up with the quadratic equations, as N².

            In the video we were also introduced with the House of Wisdom, a temple in Baghdad. In this temple, there were geometric patterns on the wall. Under the Muslim empire, the Hindu-Arabic Numerals was introduced. This kind of numeral is the one of modern use today. This empire as well introduced Algebra to the world. It was the explanation of patterns and worked like a code.  Not only was Algebra the biggest contribution of the Muslims to the world of math, they also improved the quadratic equations of the Indian civilizations. From the power of 2, they came up with equations to the power of 3.

            In the first video, we were shown how much big the contributions of the Westerners and Europeans were. But in the second video, the discoveries of the Asians were shown as quite as important, too. On the later part of the second video, it was revealed that there were European discoveries that wouldn’t be possible without the Easterners discoveries. Each one of the discoveries has a huge impact to the kind of mathematics we use today. Even if everything during their time was really very basic and out of manual computation, they were able to discover something very helpful to us now. I would say that the ancient mathematicians and discoverers during their time were extra keen and prudent with finding out about new knowledge and information. They might not have thought of how huge the impact would be in the future, still their dedication to discovering made mathematics the way it is right now. Perhaps they even discovered something just out of domestic needs and not for some mathematical solutions. In the second video, we were taught that the facts, formulas, and patterns in mathematics are all contributions of different mathematicians and scholars all throughout the world not just of the Europeans. Because in high school and elementary, we were introduced to Pythagoras, Descartes, etc., this second video is a great resource to help us realize people from the East had their own huge contributions as well.