Reading Skills Módulo 3A – Math

A brief history of mathematics

There's evidence that prehistoric people understood simple mathematics, as well as astronomy. The oldest evidence
comes from the Lebombo bone, which is about 37,000 years old and was found in Swaziland. It has 29 notches carved
into it, which could have been used to record numbers, making it a tally stick. Stronger evidence comes from the Ishango
bone, which was found on what is now the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Ishango bone is about 20,000 years old and has a series of notches carved into it in three columns. Patterns in
these numbers may show that they were made by someone who understood addition, subtraction, multiplication,
division, and prime numbers.

Prime numbers are numbers greater than one that are only divisible by themselves and one. They are the 'building
blocks' of mathematics in a similar way to how atoms are the building blocks of chemistry. The first ten prime numbers
are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, and 29.

The Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia, which is part of modern-day Iraq, developed a written language in about 3000
BCE. This was around the same time that they developed the first school mathematics. People understood geometry and
algebra by about 2000 BCE, by which time Sumer had become part of Babylon.

Around this time, both the Babylonians and Ancient Egyptians were aware of the number π (pi) the ratio of a circle's
circumference to its diameter.

By about 1500 BCE, the Babylonians were also aware of Pythagoras' theorem, which shows how the lengths of the sides
of right-angled triangles are related.

Ancient Greek mathematics began with Thales, who was born in about 624 BCE and contributed to geometry, and
Pythagoras, who was born in about 570 BCE. Both were inspired by the Babylonians and Ancient Egyptians.

Pythagoras was fascinated both by the connections between mathematics and nature, and by the certainty that
mathematical knowledge provides, especially when compared to sensory knowledge, which is sometimes unreliable.

Pythagoras is thought to have been the first to discover that music can be expressed mathematically. He believed that
objects in space obey the same physical laws as the Earth, and so suggested that planets create music as they follow
trajectories determined by similar mathematical equation.

Pythagoras coined the term 'mathematics', which meant 'learning', and founded a religious movement called
Pythagoreanism. Pythagoreans believed that the whole universe is composed of mathematics, and that numbers are real
entities that do not exist in space and time.
The Pythagoreans were reportedly shocked to discover irrational numbers. These are numbers that cannot be expressed
as a fraction or written down in full because they contain an infinite amount of numbers with no known repeating pattern.
They are said to have considered irrational numbers to be a flaw in nature, and had their discoverer killed.

A century after the founding of Pythagoreanism, ancient Greek philosopher Socrates repeated Pythagoras' argument,
that numbers are abstract entities that represent real things. Socrates' student, Plato, claimed that we can only be certain
of knowledge that originates from the mind, not the senses, which can be tricked.

Plato believed that there are two realms, the 'realm of the 'forms', which contains perfect concepts, and the physical
realm we perceive with our senses. The physical world contains imperfect copies of the true forms. Since mathematics
could be understood without sensory experience - i.e. we do not need to see 100 objects in order to know what 50+50
is - it represents certain knowledge, and so Plato believed numbers exist as real entities in the realm of the forms.

In about 387 BCE, Plato set up an academy in Athens, which became the mathematical centre of the world. Its students
included The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, ancient Greek astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus, and possibly Ancient
Greek mathematician Euclid.

Euclid made a number of discoveries in geometry shortly after 300 BCE and was the first to suggest that there are an
infinite amount of prime numbers. Euclid's proof is contained in Elements, which became one of the most popular
geometry textbooks for the next 2000 years.

The concept of infinity had previously been discussed by ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea. Zeno was about twenty
years older than Socrates, and is said to have visited him in about 450 BCE when Socrates was about twenty years old.
Zeno considered how one infinity could be larger than another - there are twice as many numbers than there are even
numbers, for example, but both are infinite. He stated that if you walked across a room, halving the distance you travel
with each step, then you would never reach the other side.

Ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus may have discovered trigonometry in about 150 BCE. Indian mathematician
Brahmagupta was the first to use zero as a number in 628 CE. This was a controversial idea since it suggested that
'nothing' represented something that is real. An even stranger new number, I, was devised almost one thousand years
later. i equals the square root of -1.

The laws relating to i were first introduced by The Italian mathematician Rafael Bombelli in 1572 [20] and the symbol
was introduced in the 18th century. I was first referred to as an imaginary number by Rene Descartes in 1637[22a].

Descartes and Pierre de Fermat devised the Cartesian coordinate system independently that year. This was used to plot
graphs, which helped Isaac Newton and German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz develop calculus in the latter half of the
century.

Descartes did not accept Pythagoras' argument, that mathematical knowledge is certain. He devised the 'dream
argument', which states that we can never be certain of anything because there's no way to prove that what we perceive
with our senses is real. It could be the case that only our mind exists, and the external world is like a dream or
hallucination.

Descartes stated, "whether I am awake or dreaming, it remains true that two and three make five, and that a square has
but four sides", but we can never be certain this is true as a God, or a "some malignant demon" could trick us into
believing that incorrect mathematics is correct.

1
Fonte: http://www.thestargarden.co.uk/History-of-mathematics.html