Juan Jose Castillos raised several important points in yesterday's post:
Ancient Egyptian Mathematics. The web site that Juan mentioned is actually
3/4 linked web sites. I recommend them, beginning with
http://members.spree.com/juancast/
The most major of Juan's points that I agree with and support is his
call for multidisciplinary teams. The history of Ancient Egyptian
mathematics is one that Egyptologists have commonly ignored since the
1920's, or deferred to math historians like DE Smith and Otto Neugebauer
(as I have read the U. of Chicago's ANE listserver). Recent Math historians
have also tended to stress the Classical Greek aspects found in the ANE,
as stated in finite and infinite series arithmetic notations, as this
listserver has documented several times over the past year, rather than
first read Egyptian texts as linked to Greek versions of arithmetic methods.
Egyptians and Greeks both employed finite statements of rational numbers
as listed in tables as concise and exact unit fraction series. The infinite
side of this subject is found in the Egyptian Old Kingdom (Horus-Eye
fractions), and later in Egypt and Greece within weights and measures
systems. Babylonians during all of their ANE history employed an infinite
series notation that never achieved the hints of abstract thought that
Egyptian finite series began to record as early as 2,000 BC, Moscow Papyrus,
and 1650 BC and the RMP 2/nth table.
The 1992 edition of the Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of
Mathematics has concluded that abstract thought has been found in the RMP;
however, failed to mention the specifics. Does any HM subscriber know of
the specifics that the Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy and
Philosophy of Mathematics that was used to reach their most interesting
conclusion?
Regards,
Milo Gardner