From: Matthew Reidsma (matthew_at_reidsrow.com)
Date: Wed Mar 24 2004 - 05:22:52 PST
On Mar 24, 2004, at 7:50 AM, Ikem Nzeribe wrote:
> Matthew,
>
> I bow to your superior knowledge on this, but you have to look back
> further than Ancient Greece for the genesis of modern mathematics
Ikem,
Now we're talking two different things here: first you said the *word*
came from Africa, and now you are saying the *field* came from Africa.
I'm no historian of mathematics, but you of course are right - the
Greeks copped nearly everything. However, if we are talking strictly
(as you indicated in your first post) about the origin of the *word*
"mathematics," it comes from the Greek. (via the Indo-European,
according to a handful of scholars.)
For the origin of mathematics, we'd likely have to get back to the
extinction of the dinosaurs:
Cave Man 1: Uh, One........Two........That's all?
Cave Man 2: Didn't it seem like there were more of those yesterday?
And now I return to my day job, which is *not* as a humorist. :)
(And my thread lives! Yay!) I've moved us to OT as well...
Matthew Reidsma
Boston, Mass, U.S.A.
matthew_at_reidsrow.com
http://newtonnews.org : One stop shopping for the Green connected mind.
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