laodan's favorite mathematics pages, page 1

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http://www.nri.org.uk/SuanshushuC.Cullen2004.pdf: Sep 30, 2007 2:24pm 1 review mathematics, science, china
http://www.nri.org.uk/SuanshushuC.Cullen2004.pdf; Suan shu shu: earliest Chinese text on mathematics. via Metafilter / Abiezer, in the Needham Research Institute Online
The Suan shu shu is an ancient Chinese collection of writings on mathematics discovered together with other texts [Chinese, incl. image of bamboo slips from same excavation] when in 1983 archaeologists opened a tomb at Zhangjiashan in Hubei believed closed in 186 BCE. Main link includes a downloadable full translation with commentary of this earliest extant Chinese work on mathematics by noted China scholar Dr Christopher Cullen. Writings on Reckoning Overview of Chinese mathematics The Suu00e0n shu00f9 shu016b FREE 151 pages PDF history of math index. I often mentioned in earlier comments that the Chinese civilization finds its roots in animism. In other words it is a succession of add-ons to the animist body of knowledge. Animist knowledge emerged as the conclusion of long haul observation of the rhythms of nature and the cosmos, as such, it was thus fundamentally pragmatic. Inheriting that animist knowledge base the Chinese naturally also inherited its pragmatism. Their pragmatism oriented their mathematical quest to solving practical questions in devising a map of the universe, in devising a measurement of time, in devising agricultural and commercial techniques. Their pragmatism differentiates starkly their mathematical approach from the approach of the ancient Greeks who built their mathematics as a development upon foundational axioms.