"[…] nor did he [Thibaut] formulate the obvious conclusion, namely, that the Greeks were not the inventors of plane geometry, rather it was the Indians. At least this was the message that the Greek scholars saw in Thibaut’s paper. And they didn’t like it."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesPeople from Washington, D.C.Historians from the United StatesMathematicians from the United StatesUniversity of California, Berkeley faculty
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Seidenberg, A. ‘The Origin of Mathematics’. Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 18, No. 4, (1978): pp. 301-342. in The Sulbasutras and the 'Pythagoras Theorem'
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Seidenberg
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Abraham Seidenberg
Abraham Seidenberg (June 2, 1916 – May 3, 1988) was an American mathematician.
15 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Abraham Seidenberg →
Related Quotes
"Seidenberg (1983), a historian of science, described the reaction to Thibaut's claim: "Thibaut himself never belabore…"
"However, Seidenberg was told by the Indologists that these Sutras, or any Vedic text for that matter, were definitely…"
"By examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana, we now know that Indian geometry predates Greek geometry by cen…"
"Its mathematics was very much like what we see in the Sulvasutras [szulbasu utras]. In the first place, it was associ…"
"‘Greece and India have a common heritage that cannot have derived from Old-Babylonia, i.e., the Old-Babylonia of abou…"
"‘A comparison of Pythagorean and Vedic mathematics together with some chronological consideration showed that the cur…"
"I think its mathematics [of the common source] was very much like what we see in the Sulbasutras. (Seidenberg 1978)"
"I cannot help thinking that it shows battle weariness rather than a considered opinion."
"Yet long before 1937 people had suggested a non-Greek origin to Greek mathematics; and long before 1943 people had po…"
"If the Indians invented plane geometry, what was to become of Greek ‘genius’ or of the Greek ‘miracle’?"