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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TideGlider who wrote (611572)	8/26/2004 8:40:57 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

It seems to me, from your own link, they played a large part, for 700 years. Longer than we've been at it.. Arabic Algebra In the 7th and 8th centuries the Arabs, united by Mohammed, conquered the land from India, across northern Africa, to Spain. In the following centuries (through the 14th) they pursued the arts and sciences and were responsible for most of the scientific advances made in the west. Although the language was Arabic many of the scholars were Greeks, Christians, Persians, or Jews. Their most valuable contribution was the preservation of Greek learning through the middle ages, and it is through their translations that much of what we know today about the Greeks became available. In addition they made original contributions of their own. They took over and improved the Hindu number symbols and the idea of positional notation. These numerals (the Hindu-Arabic system of numeration) and the algorithms for operating with them were transmitted to Europe around 1200 and are in use throughout the world today. Like the Hindus, the Arabs worked freely with irrationals. However they took a backward step in rejecting negative numbers in spite of having learned of them from the Hindus. In algebra the Arabs contributed first of all the name. The word "algebra" come from the title of a text book in the subject, Hisab al-jabr w'al muqabala, written about 830 by the astronomer/mathematician Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarizmi. This title is sometimes translated as "Restoring and Simplification" or as "Transposition and Cancellation." Our word "algorithm" in a corruption of al-Khowarizmi's name. The algebra of the Arabs was entirely rhetorical. They could solve quadratic equations, recognizing two solutions, possibly irrational, but usually rejected negative solutions. The poet/mathematician Omar Khayyam (1050 - 1130) made significant contributions to the solution of cubic equations by geometric methods involving the intersection of conics. Like Diophantus and the Hindus, the Arabs also worked with indeterminate equations.