Displaying similar documents to “The Area and the Side I Added: Some old Babylonian Geometry”

Geometrical Patterns in the Pre-classical Greek Area. Prospecting the Borderland between Decoration, Art, and Structural Inquiry

Jens Høyrup (2000)

Revue d'histoire des mathématiques

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Many general histories of mathematics mention prehistoric “geometric” decorations along with counting and tally-sticks as the earliest beginnings of mathematics, insinuating thus (without making it too explicit) that a direct line of development links such decorations to mathematical geometry. The article confronts this persuasion with a particular historical case: the changing character of geometrical decorations in the later Greek area from the Middle Neolithic through the first millennium...

It’s not that they couldn’t

Reviel Netz (2002)

Revue d'histoire des mathématiques

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The article offers a critique of the notion of ‘concepts’ in the history of mathematics. Authors in the field sometimes assume an argument from conceptual impossibility: that certain authors could not do X because they did not have concept Y. The case of the divide between Greek and modern mathematics is discussed in detail, showing that the argument from conceptual impossibility is empirically as well as theoretically flawed. An alternative account of historical diversity is offered,...