I think it’s important to acknowledge non-Euro math sources because it allows people to better understand the universality of this field of study. That groups who were not in contact with each other all discovered the same concepts using different methods. The complexity and ingenuity of the ways the ancient peoples/cultures used act as a bedrock to what we are learning today. People now can’t begin to come up with ideas on how certain problems were solved with no technology. A lot of theorems and findings are already done from the past, we are so used to just using them in our daily lives. From ancient China, the significance of these foundational texts, especially the "Jiu Zhang" and "Zhoubi suanjing," persisted for millennia. Around the time these works were completed, the Chinese civil service grew under the Eastern Han dynasty. So China’s prosperity didn’t come from using knowledge gleaned from Euro math sources. If I mention and give credit to how the ancient Babylonians, Indians, Egyptians, Chinese, and Myans, it displays integrity to those groups. Seeing from the lens they derived some rules from opens our minds and makes us scratch our heads to think in new directions. It also gives a breath of fresh air to know that new ideas aren't confined to one area of the world.
The "Zhoubi suanjing” focused on astronomy and mathematics related to land surveying and construction. It introduces the gou-gu theorem, which resembles the Pythagorean theorem. The notion that of a right-triangle the sum of the squares of its legs equals the square of its hypotenuse isn’t solely a Pythagoras (or ancient Greek) finding. The ancient Babylonians centuries before Pythagoras also listed Pythagorean triples, which is not a trivial task. Other mathematical terms like Pascal’s triangle fall into the same category. Pascal wasn’t the first one to discover it. It is also known as the Staircase of Mount Meru which pays tribute to Indian mathematician Pingala. Clear evidence/sources from ancient China mentions it as Yang Hui’s triangle. It’s the same triangle we know today but is depicted using rod numerals similar to zongs and hengs. The reason why we use Pythagorean theorem and Pascal’s triangle is because it’s well embedded into the literature and there is less ambiguity when talking about them. People will know automatically what they mean, whereas if I say the Staircase to Mount Meru, others might think I’m referring to some attraction site. So it’s helpful to mention these things.
Hi Michael, really meaningful mentions, here. Particularly about China's prosperity not coming from being gleaned from Eurocentric sources. Too often, an opposite narrative is popularised. I wonder if you might expand on the second paragraph in terms of how one might mitigate the erasure of the stories behind theorems that were named after the people who weren't necessarily the first to deal with that theorem.
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