Origins of Greek Mathematics
The origins of Greek mathematics are not easily documented. The earliest advanced civilizations in the country of Greece and in Europe were the Minoan and later Mycenean civilization, both of which flourished during the 2nd millennium BC. While these civilizations possessed writing and were capable of advanced engineering, including four-story palaces with drainage and beehive tombs, they left behind no mathematical documents.
Though no direct evidence is available, it is generally thought that the neighboring Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations had an influence on the younger Greek tradition. Between 800 BC and 600 BC Greek mathematics generally lagged behind Greek literature, and there is very little known about Greek mathematics from this period—nearly all of which was passed down through later authors, beginning in the mid-4th century BC.
Read more about this topic: Ancient Greek Mathematicians
Famous quotes containing the words origins of, origins, greek and/or mathematics:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“Make room, Roman writers, make room for Greek writers; something greater than the Iliad is born.”
—Propertius Sextus (c. 50–16 B.C.)
“The three main medieval points of view regarding universals are designated by historians as realism, conceptualism, and nominalism. Essentially these same three doctrines reappear in twentieth-century surveys of the philosophy of mathematics under the new names logicism, intuitionism, and formalism.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)