Tracing Practices Purloined by the “Three Pillars”*
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra This Page Intentionally Left Blank Roger Hart
The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra This page intentionally left blank Roger Hart The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2011 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 987654321 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Control Number: 2010924546 ISBN 13: 978-0-8018-9755-9 ISBN: 0-8018-9755-6 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible. All of our book papers are acid-free, and our jackets and covers are printed on paper with recycled content. With love, gratitude, and affection to my daughter, Nikki Janan Hart, and to my parents, Walter G. Hart, Jr. and Charlene Hart This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ............................................................ ix 1 Introduction ...................................................... 1 Overview of This Book .............................................. 2 Historiographic Issues .............................................. 4 Outline of the Chapters ............................................ -
East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (EASTM - Universität Tübingen)
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (EASTM - Universität Tübingen) Reviews 225 Roger Hart, The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011, XIII + 286 pp. Eberhard Knobloch [Eberhard H. Knobloch is Professor emeritus of History of Science and Technology at the Berlin University of Technology and Academy Professor at the Berlin- Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW), the former Prussian Academy of Sciences. He studied mathematics, classical philology, and history of science and technology. He received his Ph.D. from the Berlin University of Technology. He is heavily involved in the edition of Leibniz’s posthumous writings and is currently project leader of two series of the academy edition of Leibniz’s Complete Writings and Letters and also of the Alexander von Humboldt Research group at the BBAW. Since 2005 he has been president of the International Academy of the History of Science, Paris. Contact: [email protected]] In this work, the author uses an interdisciplinary, cultural-historical approach in order to study “the history of the emergence, dissemination, and legitimation of scientific knowledge in the context of non-Western cultures and systems of thought“. He “seeks to develop better approaches for analyzing science in non-Western cultures“ (p. XII). His special discipline is mathematics, his non-Western country is China. His case study is what he calls “linear algebra in China“. In opposition to the Chinese official Xu Guangqi (1562-1633) he comes to the conclusion that Chinese mathematics of the time was not in a state of decline and that what the West “discovered” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had already been known to the Chinese for more than a thousand years. -
Eberhard Knobloch
Reviews 225 Roger Hart, The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011, XIII + 286 pp. Eberhard Knobloch [Eberhard H. Knobloch is Professor emeritus of History of Science and Technology at the Berlin University of Technology and Academy Professor at the Berlin- Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW), the former Prussian Academy of Sciences. He studied mathematics, classical philology, and history of science and technology. He received his Ph.D. from the Berlin University of Technology. He is heavily involved in the edition of Leibniz’s posthumous writings and is currently project leader of two series of the academy edition of Leibniz’s Complete Writings and Letters and also of the Alexander von Humboldt Research group at the BBAW. Since 2005 he has been president of the International Academy of the History of Science, Paris. Contact: [email protected]] In this work, the author uses an interdisciplinary, cultural-historical approach in order to study “the history of the emergence, dissemination, and legitimation of scientific knowledge in the context of non-Western cultures and systems of thought“. He “seeks to develop better approaches for analyzing science in non-Western cultures“ (p. XII). His special discipline is mathematics, his non-Western country is China. His case study is what he calls “linear algebra in China“. In opposition to the Chinese official Xu Guangqi (1562-1633) he comes to the conclusion that Chinese mathematics of the time was not in a state of decline and that what the West “discovered” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had already been known to the Chinese for more than a thousand years. -
On the Histories of Linear Algebra: the Case of Linear Systems Christine Larson, Indiana University There Is a Long-Standing Tr
On the Histories of Linear Algebra: The Case of Linear Systems Christine Larson, Indiana University There is a long-standing tradition in mathematics education to look to history to inform instructional design (see e.g. Avital, 1995; Dorier, 2000; Swetz, 1995). An historical analysis of the genesis of a mathematical idea offers insight into (1) the contexts that give rise to a need for a mathematical construct, (2) the ways in which available tools might shape the development of that mathematical idea, and (3) the types of informal and intuitive ways that students might conceptualize that idea. Such insights can be particularly important for instruction and instructional design in inquiry-oriented approaches where students are expected to reinvent significant mathematical ideas. Sensitivity to the original contexts and notations that afforded the development of particular mathematical ideas is invaluable to the instructor or instructional designer who aims to facilitate students’ reinvention of such ideas. This paper will explore the ways in which instruction and instructional design in linear algebra can be informed by looking to the history of the subject. Three of the most surprising things I have learned from my excursion into the literature on the history of linear algebra had to do with Gaussian elimination. The first surprise was learning that the idea behind Gaussian elimination preceded Gauss by over 2000 years – there is evidence that the Chinese were using an equivalent procedure to solve systems of linear equations as early as 200 BC (Katz, 1995; van der Waerden, 1983). The second surprise was that Gauss developed the method we now call Gaussian elimination without the use of matrices.