MATH 201 History and Philosophy of Mathematics

Republic of the Philippines

BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY

Jose P. Laurel Polytechnic College
Malvar, Batangas
College of Teacher Education
History and Philosophy of Mathematics
PREHISTORIC AND BABYLONIAN MATHEMATICS
History
a chronological record of significant events (as affecting a nation or institution) often
including an explanation of their causes

a branch of knowledge that records and explains past events

events of the past

Philosophy
a search for the total human meaning of mans existence and experience

the knowledge of things by their ultimate causes or reasons (Aristotle)

History of Mathematics
The area of study known as the history of mathematics is primarily an investigation into
the origin of discoveries in mathematics and, to a lesser extent, an investigation into the
mathematical methods and notations of the past.
Philosophy of Mathematics
The philosophy of mathematics plays an important role in analytic philosophy, both as a
subject of inquiry in its own right, and as an important landmark in the broader philosophical
landscape. Mathematical knowledge has long been necessary and certain, so giving an account
of mathematical knowledge is an important part of epistemology.
PREHISTORIC TIMES

PALEOLITHIC AGE
often referred to as the Old Stone Age
no permanent places to live; lived in
caves and made temporary homes by
using plants and animal skins to make
tents
more preoccupied with looking for food
in order to survive
made weapons for hunting like daggers
and spears made of stones, bones, or
sticks

NEOLITHIC AGE
often referred to as the New Stone Age
marked with changes from crude ways
of doing things to a more refined from
developed farming, tamed wild animals,
and
working
with
metals;
and
established villages
developed ideas of trade, private
property, and quantity

SUMERIAN/ BABYLONIAN MATHEMATICS

Babylonian Mathematics
refers to any mathematics of the people of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq)
named Babylonian mathematics due to the central role of Babylon as a place of study
written in cuneiform script, tablets were inscribed whilst the clay was moist, and baked
hard in an oven or by the heat of the sun
The earliest evidence of recovered clay tablets date from 1800 to 1600 BC, and cover
topics which include fractions, algebra, quadratic and cubic equations, and the calculation of
regular reciprocal pairs. The tablets also include multiplication tables and methods for solving
linear and quadratic equations. The Babylonian tablet YBC 7289 gives an approximation to 2
accurate to five decimal places.
The Sumerians had developed an abstract form of writing based on cuneiform (wedgeshaped) symbols. Their symbols were written on wet clay tablets which are baked in the hot
sun and many thousands of these tablets have survived to this day. It was the use of stylus on a
clay medium that led to the use of cuneiform symbols since curved lines could not be drawn.
Sexagesimal number system

MATH 201 History and Philosophy of Mathematics

positional system with a base of 60

still used for measuring time, angles and geographic coordinates
The Babylonians divided the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes, and each
minute into 60 seconds.
To write 5h 25 30, is just to write the sexagesimal fraction, 5 25/60 30/3600
Perhaps the most amazing aspect of Babylonians calculating skills was their construction of
tablets to aid calculation. Two tablets found at Senkerah on the Euphrates in 1854 dated from
2000 BC. They give squares of the numbers up to 59 and cubes of the numbers up to 32. Also,
Babylonians had a true place value system where digits written in the left column represented
larger values, much as in the decimal system. They lacked, however, an equivalent of the
decimal point, and so the place value of a symbol often had to be inferred from the context.
EGYPTIAN MATHEMATICS
Egyptian Mathematics
refers to mathematics written in the Egyptian language
There are two major sources: the Moscow Papyrus and the Rhind or Ahmes papyrus.
ostraca: tomb inscriptions and notes written on pottery shards
body parts (e.g. a palm was the width of the hand, a cubit the measurement from elbow
to fingertips)

Rhind Papyrus (1650 BC)

a kind of instruction manual in arithmetic and geometry, and it gives us explicit
demonstrations of how multiplication and division was carried out at that time
also contains evidence of other mathematical knowledge, including unit fractions,
composite and prime numbers, arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means, and how to
solve first order linear equations as well as arithmetic and geometric series
Berlin Papyrus (1300 BC)
shows that ancient Egyptians could solve second-order algebraic (quadratic) equations

The Egyptians approximated the area of a circle by using shapes whose area they did
know. They observed that the area of a circle of diameter 9 units, for example, was very close to
the area of a square with sides of 8 units, so that the area of circles of other diameters could be
obtained by multiplying the diameter by 89 and then squaring it. This gives an effective
approximation of accurate to within less than one percent.

Hieroglyphs
a writing system used by the Egyptians around 3000 BC
little pictures representing words
For example, to illustrate the idea with an English sentence, we can see how "I hear a
barking dog" might be represented by: "an eye", "an ear", "bark of tree" + "head with
crown", "a dog". Of course the same symbols might mean something different in a
different context, so "an eye" might mean "see" while "an ear" might signify "sound".
The Ancient Egyptians used a base 10 number system. The number one was depicted by a
simple stroke; the number 2 was represented by two strokes, etc. The numbers 10, 100, 1000,
10,000 and 1,000,000 had their own hieroglyphs. Number 10 is a hobble for cattle, number 100
is represented by a coiled rope, the number 1000 is represented by a lotus flower, the number
10,000 is represented by a finger, the number 100,000 is represented by a frog and a million was
represented by a god with his hands raised in adoration.

MATH 201 History and Philosophy of Mathematics

The numbers 1 through 9

Higher numbers
The number one thousand, three hundred forty two (1,342) would look like:
As can easily be seen, adding numeral hieroglyphs is easy. One just adds the individual
symbols, but replacing ten copies of a symbol by a single symbol of the next higher value.
Fractions to the ancient Egyptians were limited to unit fractions (with the exception of the
frequently used 2/3 and less frequently used 3/4). A unit fraction is of the form 1/n where n is an
integer and these were represented in numeral hieroglyphs
by placing the symbol representing a "mouth", which meant
"part", above the number. Here are some examples:

Another number system, which the Egyptians used

after the invention of writing on papyrus, was composed of
hieratic numerals. These numerals allowed numbers to be
written in a far more compact form yet using the system
required many more symbols to be memorized. There were
separate symbols for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 20, 30, 40,
50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800,
900, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000, 7000, 8000, and
9000. With this system, numbers could be formed of a few
symbols. The number 9999 had just 4 hieratic symbols
instead of 36 hieroglyphs. One major difference between the
hieratic numerals and our own number system was the
hieratic numerals did not form a positional system so the
particular numerals could be written in any order.

Rosetta Stone
The Ancient Egyptians used both several methods of writing, including hieroglyphic,
hieratic, and demotic scripts. The story behind how "modern" scholars were able to decipher
these methods of writing is the story of the Rosetta Stone. Hieroglyphic script was used by
Egyptians for important or religious documents, while the demotic script was a simplified version
of hieroglyphics, and was the writing method for "the common". Demotic script evolved from
hieratic, and was used during the "last period" of ancient Egyptian, a 1000 year span from 500
BC to 500 AD. By 400 AD, demotic script was replaced almost entirely by the use of Greek
writing.
The Rosetta Stone, carved in 200BC, was written in three scripts (hieroglyphic, demotic,
and Greek) so that the priests, government officials and rulers of Egypt could read what it said. It

MATH 201 History and Philosophy of Mathematics

was found by Napoleons soldiers in 1800 (1799), during the French occupation of Egypt. After
the British defeated Napoleon, the Rosetta Stone was moved to Britain, where it now resides in
the
British
Museum.
Prepared by:
Ms. Rensie Vique F. Falculan
Instructor