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>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

>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.

_-david-_ 5y ago
>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 I was talking about the Greeks not Pythagoras. If previous Greeks discovered the theory and it was named after Pythagoras it would still mean that white people discovered it which is what the whole article is about. Can you provide proof that the Egyptians or Babylonians had the entire theory? I asked in my previous comment but you didn't provide any. In the wiki article it says they had awareness of Pythagorean Triples but doesn't state they had the full theorem. The wiki says the theorem is actually 4 parts "The history of the theorem can be divided into four parts: knowledge of Pythagorean triples, knowledge of the relationship among the sides of a right triangle, knowledge of the relationships among adjacent angles, and proofs of the theorem within some deductive system." [1] I think the problem is the last point which is possibly the missing part for the Egyptians and Babylonians. Do you have any proof that they had the last point? I never made the claim Pythagoras discovered it. I even stated Greeks multiple times when referring to the discovery not Pythagoras. I even said "If the Greeks discovered it and Pythagoras popularised it then the name would be fitting." We literally have no idea who discovered it. The Greeks spread it to the West where we named it after Pythagoras. We know the Greeks had fully developed it. >I don't. Nor have I claimed to. You said "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." Maybe you just mean in that time period and not specifically those empires? Regardless, there were people in Greece during those times and since as you said you don't actually know who discovered it, it could very easily have been the Greeks. And like I said if the Greeks discovered it the whole point of the article is moot. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem
Tainnor 5y ago
> 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. Can you describe the "right picture" of mathematics? Where would Real Analysis be without Newton, Leibniz, Cauchy, Weierstrass, etc.? Where would Set Theory be without Cantor, Zermelo and Fraenkel? Where would logic be without Russel, Tarski and Gödel? Where would computability theory (and thus, computers) be without Turing, Church and von Neumann? ... and so on Unless you can find evidence that all these fields were independently studied elsewhere, or that those fields aren't important (tough sell), I will have to continue to believe that a large part of what is today's mathematics did originate in the West. That doesn't make the West "superior" (or deny the fact that, during certain periods, Europe was an intellectual backwater compared to other areas), but it's just how history went.

_-david-_ 5y ago

>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 I was talking about the Greeks not Pythagoras. If previous Greeks discovered the theory and it was named after Pythagoras it would still mean that white people discovered it which is what the whole article is about. Can you provide proof that the Egyptians or Babylonians had the entire theory? I asked in my previous comment but you didn't provide any. In the wiki article it says they had awareness of Pythagorean Triples but doesn't state they had the full theorem. The wiki says the theorem is actually 4 parts "The history of the theorem can be divided into four parts: knowledge of Pythagorean triples, knowledge of the relationship among the sides of a right triangle, knowledge of the relationships among adjacent angles, and proofs of the theorem within some deductive system." [1] I think the problem is the last point which is possibly the missing part for the Egyptians and Babylonians. Do you have any proof that they had the last point? I never made the claim Pythagoras discovered it. I even stated Greeks multiple times when referring to the discovery not Pythagoras. I even said "If the Greeks discovered it and Pythagoras popularised it then the name would be fitting." We literally have no idea who discovered it. The Greeks spread it to the West where we named it after Pythagoras. We know the Greeks had fully developed it. >I don't. Nor have I claimed to. You said "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." Maybe you just mean in that time period and not specifically those empires? Regardless, there were people in Greece during those times and since as you said you don't actually know who discovered it, it could very easily have been the Greeks. And like I said if the Greeks discovered it the whole point of the article is moot. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem

Tainnor 5y ago

> 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. Can you describe the "right picture" of mathematics? Where would Real Analysis be without Newton, Leibniz, Cauchy, Weierstrass, etc.? Where would Set Theory be without Cantor, Zermelo and Fraenkel? Where would logic be without Russel, Tarski and Gödel? Where would computability theory (and thus, computers) be without Turing, Church and von Neumann? ... and so on Unless you can find evidence that all these fields were independently studied elsewhere, or that those fields aren't important (tough sell), I will have to continue to believe that a large part of what is today's mathematics did originate in the West. That doesn't make the West "superior" (or deny the fact that, during certain periods, Europe was an intellectual backwater compared to other areas), but it's just how history went.