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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (142228)	8/1/2004 1:34:10 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I know that it's commonly said that the Arabs invented algebra. It's also commonly said that they invented distillation. These concepts date from the Medieval era, when the West was struggling to regain knowledge lost in the Dark Ages, after the fall of Rome, when their primary source of lost knowledge were Islamic institutions, for example, in Umayyid Cordoba, Spain. We now know that, while it is completely accurate to say that Europeans first learned many things from the Arabs, and believed that the Arabs invented them, it's not so. Simply not so. They were the Westernmost promulgators of ancient knowledge that was carried back and forth from Western Europe to Korea, Japan, China, Mongolia, Vietnam, Cambodia, India, etc. etc. etc. If something was invented in one place, it was carried everywhere else. That is, in my eyes, the best argument in favor of empires, but human beings being what they are, they engage in free trade in peacetime and in wartime. Some even prosper better in wartime. (Mq hates it when I argue that last bit.) When I learned that the oldest known alembic is a 5000 year old clay pot still in a museum in Pakistan, it seemed likely to me that the technique of distillation has been around for far longer than that. What are the odds that archeologists found the first one? The Indus River culture, like almost all high cultures, flourished within a short distance of running water, in their case, the Indus River and the coastal areas of Pakistan and India. The shore has advanced significantly inland since then, and much of it is now underwater. Everything they find in our lifetimes is a gift towards our understanding.

To: Neocon who wrote (142228)	8/1/2004 2:00:18 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The Babylonian Origin of the Quadratic Equations. The Europeans first learned their algebra from the Algebra of Muhammed Ibn Musa al-Khuwarmizi (c. 820). Algebra was therefore regarded as an Arabic science and it retained its Arabic name, al-jabar, from the title of al-Khuwarmizi’s book, which is al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabar wal muqpabala. Now we know better. We know that as early as 2250 B.C. the science with some of its methods and types was already cultivated in the mathematical schools of the Babylonians, and that its very name, al-jabar, comes from the Babylonian language and means “equation, confrontation,” the confrontation of the two equal sides of the equation. The Origin and Development of the Quadratic Equations in Babylonian, Greek, and Early Arabic Algebra Solomon Gandz Osiris, Vol. 3. (1937), pp. 405-557 Gandz also writes about the three schools of thought as to the first known algebra, India, Syria and Egypt. I have read recently that it was invented in Southeast Asia but can't find the source at present.