Basic Mathematics

Author(s): L C Jain
Publisher: Rajasthan Prakrit Bharti Sansthan Jaipur

Page 28

CHAPTER II A SYNOPSIS OF WORLD HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS UP TO
MAHĀVĪRĀCĀRYA
“Mathematics is a self-contained microcosm, but it also has the potentiality of mirroring and modelling all the processes of thought and perhaps all of science. It has always had, and continues to an ever increasing degree to have, great usefulness. One could even go so far as to say that mathematics was necessary for man's conquest of nature and for the development of the human race through the shaping of its modes of thinking."32
-Mark Kac and Stanislaw Marcin Ulam
It is unknown, in what part of the world, and when one thought that number and form could be as much useful as the language, for civilization. The present structure of mathematics has been laid down on the basis of number and form. From the number system were evolved arithmetic and algebra, whereas the form study was responsible for evolution of geometry. By the seventeenth century, the harmonious phases of both led to the development of mathematical analysis.
Even hundreds of years before Christ, the countries and lands recorded their contemporary knowledge through material which could survive upto the present day. Out of these, the ancient civilizations of Sumer and Babylon, Egypt, India as well as China are famous in the whole world.
(a) Sumer and Babylon :
According to Neugebauer, 33 for the old Babylonian texts (Hammurapi dynasty : c.-1800 to - 1600), prehistory cannot be given regarding Sumerian development. He it of the opinion that Babylonian mathematics was not gradually brought to its high level, but as a rapid growth, based on the preceding development of the sexagesimal place value system
32. Britannica Perspectives, vol. I, 1768-1968, 1968, London. 33. "The Exact Sciences in Antiquity", Providence, 1957, pp. 29 et. seq.