Sunday and all is right with the world……time to kick back and enjoy life for a couple of days…..bring on the memories……
When I was in university I was always running across a couple of guys that seem to be having the same argument every time……who was the father of calculus…….Newton or Leibniz…..this argument went on for years….a couple of geeks fighting over something that most of us are not sure of what the Hell it is…….
Appears that maybe their argument was a bit off……..or should I say? A moot point.
A newly deciphered clay tablet from ancient Babylon has science writers buzzing because it just might “rewrite the history of mathematics,” as Live Science puts it. The tablet shows that Babylonians were using sophisticated geometric principles to track the path of Jupiter in the sky, says researcher Mathieu Ossendrijver of Humboldt University in Berlin, who deciphered the tablet and published his findings in Science. What’s intriguing is that these early astronomers wrote their calculations sometime between 350BC and 50BC—at least 1,400 years earlier than the European mathematicians who currently get credit for inventing the technique, reports NPR. The upshot is that the Babylonians were dabbling in abstract principles dealing with Jupiter’s velocity and position relative to other stars in the sky, and they described that movement using a “sort of precalculus,” in the words of the New York Times. “It is an application in astronomy that was totally new,” says Ossendrijver.
He calls it “truly an astonishing find,” and while he may be biased, others in the field seem equally wowed. “I think it’s quite a remarkable discovery,” says a professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. The Times has a layman’s explainer: “The Babylonians were calculating the distance Jupiter traveled in the sky from its appearance to its position 60 days later. Using the technique of splitting a trapezoid into two smaller ones of equal area, they then figured out how long it took Jupiter to travel half that distance.” Babylonians were known to be talented astronomers and mathematicians, but the small tablet takes them far above previous estimations, observes National Geographic. “This geometrical trick rewrites the history books.” (Scientists are getting closer to unraveling an ancient Incan technique as well.)
Damn! Those Sumerians or Babylonians were a lot smarter than we have given them credit…….maybe it is time to give credit where credit is due……
Enjoy your day…..and some football…..I will be back in force Monday….Tah!
Interesting. I missed out on Calculus somehow but I did manage to squeeze by with a “D” in Algebra. Funny how I was forced to take so many courses in school that don’t have a blessed thing to do with my day to day life. I often wonder, “What was that all about?” Unfortunately my school did not offer a course in Paleontology because if they did I might have died of a mosquito bite while on a discovery expedition too.
I agree with the useless course….like English…we are one of the4 only countries that has to teach our own language thru college….worthless….
and still Johnny Can’t Read.
With direction then Johnny will NEVER catch up with the rest of the world
probably not unless he is fortunate enough to go to school in India where graduates of the 8th grade have the equivalent of an associate of arts degree in almost anything their hert desires. That’s what my world-traveling Son tells me anyway.
I have seen where Finland has one of the best systems in the world…but that is just a report…
Go Anciemts. I loved Calculus…never thought about who invented it, though.
Broncos, Panthers, or WGAS? Go 🏈!
Ancients.
I have seen a Cuneiform tablet that has Pythagoras theory on it…..it was done several centuries before the father of geometry……why does he get the credit……chuq
I believe it was Goethe, or, perhaps, Nietzsche, who noted everything had already been said; the trick is to rediscover it…. Makes me feel justified for using so many of the ancient sages’ words to make my points…. They DID know more than we mostly give them credit for…. but, then, that, too, is human nature….
gigoid, the dubious…..
I totally agree……chuq