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>It literally has no impact if 100% of the mathematics we learn about are all from one race. Except, if things were truly discovered first by other people, sho

• jterrys 5y ago
  >Pythagoras did not discover the theorem - it dates back to the Egyptians or Babylonians, and it was written of in a fairly extensive manner in India hundreds of years before Pythagoras as well. Ah, see viewpoints like these are why I suppose I take offense to the whole gist of this entire conversation. Pythagoras absolutely did discover the theorem. Unless you can provide evidence that he was aware or attributed it to other regions or mathematicians? The Egyptians and Babylonians also discovered it as well. Convergent discoveries can occur. Your main notion is (I presume) about who discovered it first. Which is arguably somewhat of an important nomenclature. But then let me ask you this: How much weight can we attribute to the significance of this discovery to the Egyptians and Babylonians? When its Pythagoras' pupils and followers, benefactors and historians, who put his theorem to practical application and developed it further? Do we value the man who discovered the wheel, or the man who realized he could take that wheel, duplicate it, put a shaft between, and cart more things around? What about the man who taught others to do that? Pythagoras was part of an institution of like minded thinkers which educated the ancient world (if you want to get pedantic, they were glorified tutors to rich kids, but they still got paid to think and spread their knowledge nonetheless). Their preserved writings arguably lay the foundations of western thought. That by itself, in my opinion, lends quite a lot of weight to the importance of his attribution to the discovery of the theorem, and why I feel like you've slighted Pythagoras more than you realize.
  • lern_too_spel 5y ago
    > Pythagoras absolutely did discover the theorem. There is very little historical record of Pythagoras because he led a cult that was sworn to secrecy. He almost certainly did not discover the theorem himself.
  • cthalupa 5y ago
    >Pythagoras absolutely did discover the theorem. Unless you can provide evidence that he was aware or attributed it to other regions or mathematicians? Well, to answer this we have to talk a bit about Pythagoras himself: We have basically zero ability to talk about him in general with any historical certainty. The original historical depictions of him even portray him as more of a mystic than a mathematician. The historical evidence for Pythagoras studying in Egypt prior to the theorem being created is about as strong as any other evidence we have for things Pythagoras did, in which case, it is as plausible he learned it while there as anything else we know about him. But then we have other problems: The first mention of the theorem being attributed to him doesn't appear in the historical record until centuries after his death. We have no direct evidence he was responsible for the (re)discovery of this theorem to begin with, so it might be a moot point that he might have studied in Egypt. He's also written as having studied with the Mesopotamians, the Persians, the Galatians, the Indians, and the Assyrians, as well as multiple others, for years to decades each. These can't all be true. >How much weight can we attribute to the significance of this discovery to the Egyptians and Babylonians? When its Pythagoras' pupils and followers, benefactors and historians, who put his theorem to practical application and developed it further? Do we value the man who discovered the wheel, or the man who realized he could take that wheel, duplicate it, put a shaft between, and cart more things around? What about the man who taught others to do that? This all rings of having a very Western-centric view of the world. The Babylonians put it to practical use in land disputes. The Egyptians did as well - it would have been quite handy in building the pyramids. In India, it was originally used for properly spacing things for Vedic rituals, but was later used for architecture and a variety of other things. And this is quite simply a good view of why this is an issue: Your education focused on the Western uses of the theorem, giving you the mistaken idea that the practical application and spread of knowledge was limited to the West, when that simply isn't the case. It's not your fault - we're all products of our education to an extent, and I felt the exact same way for a long time. That's a large part about what Durham U and others are trying to fix with this sort of thing.
• _-david-_ 5y ago
  It is funny that you don't know who first discovered it, but you are positive it wasn't the Greeks. Regardless, the Egyptians may have only discovered part of it. As far as I know, they didn't have any mention of triangles which is a rather critical part. I don't know about the Babylonians but given your assumption about how much the Egyptians knew despite there being no proof it doesn't look promising for them either. I would welcome any actual proof you have though. How do you know it was the Babylonians or the Egyptians? Why couldn't it have been somebody prior to them? You said it was written about extensively in India. How do you know it wasn't the Indians? For that matter how do we know Greeks prior to Pythagoras were not the ones to discover it? If the Greeks discovered it and Pythagoras popularised it then the name would be fitting. You have to remember absence of proof is not proof of absence so you can't just say we can't find any Greek writing prior to writings in Egypt or Babylon. >This also helps solve a whole host of other issues you might not believe exist I agree that attributing the Pythagorean Theorem to the Egyptians would solve racism. /s In all seriousness it wouldn't solve any problems if we said the Egyptians discovered it.
  • cthalupa 5y ago
    >It is funny that you don't know who first discovered it, but you are positive it wasn't the Greeks. I'm positive it wasn't Pythagoras. Please argue against my actual statements instead of a strawman. How am I positive it wasn't Pythagoras? Because it existed before he did. That means that barring time travel, I can be positive it wasn't him, but still quite unsure on the first person or people to actually do so. >Regardless, the Egyptians may have only discovered part of it. As far as I know, they didn't have any mention of triangles which is a rather critical part. Your knowledge is incorrect - the argument that the Egyptians only discovered part of it is that we only have direct evidence of them doing it for the 3/4/5 triple, and that Pythagoras took that after his time in Egypt and generalized it for any right triangle. >I don't know about the Babylonians but given your assumption about how much the Egyptians knew despite there being no proof it doesn't look promising for them either. I would welcome any actual proof you have though. You're already operating from a false basis, but I can speak to the knowledge we have of Babylonians using the theorem: We have several sets of tablets from ancient Babylon that make use of triples for surveying land and calculating ownership. These tables of triples would have absolutely required understanding the theorem to create, and were generalized for use with right triangles. It's possible this knowledge was lost and the Egyptians only knew whatever triples made it to them and that Pythagoras re-discovered the broader use case, but it's also just possible the evidence that Egyptians could apply it more broadly has been lost to the sands of time. Regardless, we do know that Pythagoras is not the first person to discover the theorem. >How do you know it wasn't the Indians? I don't. Nor have I claimed to. >I agree that attributing the Pythagorean Theorem to the Egyptians would solve racism. /s I am trying to take your comment in good faith, but this makes it difficult to do so. Obviously, no one is claiming that solving this or any other single thing solves anything as large as racism, but mentioning that the theorem has been in use by many cultures that predates Pythagoras does help with the fundamental issue of providing an inaccurate picture of the history of mathematical discovery being as dominated by Western mathematicians as we make it out to be today. Whether or not you care if the theorem was discovered by the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, or Indians doesn't mean that others don't, or that it doesn't play into forming a false sense of superiority about Western scholarly pursuits. All it takes to help this situation is to provide some history on the theorem and mention that it was used prior to it's modern namesake and provide some examples and you correct a misleading narrative. >In all seriousness it wouldn't solve any problems if we said the Egyptians discovered it. Many people are unaware that many mathematical principles were discovered and re-discovered independently across many cultures and many different periods of time. They have a false picture of the history of math that makes it seem as if a huge chunk of the most important mathematical concepts were discovered exclusively by Western mathematicians. If we need to get into a discussion about how that mistaken belief could play into racial biases, including unconscious ones, we can, but I hope that that is fairly apparent. I also hope it is fairly apparent how solving this could help inspire people from non-Western backgrounds as well, but, again, we can have that discussion if needed too.
• Tainnor 5y ago
  > The goal is to get the objective part correct in giving credit where it is due. This also helps solve a whole host of other issues you might not believe exist, but even from that standpoint, this is the right thing to do if you truly want mathematics to be objective. You're confusing mathematics with the history of mathematics. The latter does exist as a discipline and can be interesting in its own right, but its insights don't fundamentally change what's mathematical truth or what not. It doesn't matter in the slightest who first discovered (and who first proved) that a^2+b^2=c^2. But you're not going to be able to change a name that's literally been around for centuries just because you don't like it for some arbitrary reason. Also, IMHO, if anything it should be called Euclid's law of triangles or something, because his is the first known proof of the theorem. That the Babylonians and Egyptians knew about it is cool, but they didn't give us a proof (nor do I believe did they care about proof; that's a pretty Greek invention).