Posted on 01/24/2009 6:43:23 PM PST by Daffynition
For seventy years, a prayer book moldered in the closet of a family in France, passed down from one generation to the next. Its mildewed parchment pages were stiff and contorted, tarnished by burn marks and waxy smudges. Behind the text of the prayers, faint Greek letters marched in lines up the page, with an occasional diagram disappearing into the spine.
The owners wondered if the strange book might have some value, so they took it to Christie's Auction House of London. And in 1998, Christie's auctioned it off—for two million dollars.
For this was not just a prayer book. The faint Greek inscriptions and accompanying diagrams were, in fact, the only surviving copies of several works by the great Greek mathematician Archimedes.
An intensive research effort over the last nine years has led to the decoding of much of the almost-obliterated Greek text. The results were more revolutionary than anyone had expected. The researchers have discovered that Archimedes was working out principles that, centuries later, would form the heart of calculus and that he had a more sophisticated understanding of the concept of infinity than anyone had realized. [snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
The top layer of writing in this 700-year-old book describes Christian prayers. But underneath, almost obliterated, are the only surviving copies of many of the works of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes.
The owner of the Archimedes Palimpsest.
Dirty MATH book ping!........
A good concept of infinity is necessary for calculus, but also a good concept of zero is also, which would not come until the Arab mathematicians of the Dark Ages invented it........
I’m not trying to pick a fight, really, but zero was discovered and not invented...imho.
That IS calculus = y*0*infinity <> 0
a=b=1
aa=ab
aa-bb=ab-bb
(a+b)(a-b)=b(a-b)
a+b=b
2=1
The idea of “zero” was well known, but the actual representation of zero as a number had to be invented. We use Arabic numerals because their numbering system was so much easier to use and calculate with than the Roman or Greek numbering systems that used letters for numbers and quantities. The place holder numeral “zero” was indeed a great invention........
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Thanks Red Badger. Archimedes Palimpsest update. |
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Cool history story bump.
Moebius on ice...
...with a twist.
LOL. I crack myself up.
Can I ...um...borrow that book?
The Arabs had nothing to do with the concept of zero except to carry it over from India where it was discovered and used for centuries before the Islamic conquests. (They took credit for everything they didn’t destroy).
The Arabs had nothing to do with the concept of zero except to carry it over from India where it was discovered and used for centuries before the Islamic conquests. (The Islamics took credit for everything they didn’t destroy).
How did you get from the fourth line to the fifth one?
2=1
That’s good!
(except for the dividing by zero part)
Cancel out (a-b) on each side of the equation.
I heard you the first time....;^)
0/0=?......
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