Math and Science Across Cultures

Math and Science Across Cultures
Author: Maurice Bazin
Publisher: Turtleback Books
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2002
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780613710091

From the creators of the bestselling "The Explorabook" come innovative, hands-on math and science activities of many cultures. With instructions in this book, one can construct a Brazilian carnival instrument, play a peg solitaire game from Madagascar, or count like an Egyptian. Illustrations throughout.

Mathematics Across Cultures

Mathematics Across Cultures
Author: Helaine Selin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9401143013

Mathematics Across Cultures: A History of Non-Western Mathematics consists of essays dealing with the mathematical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Inca, Egyptian, and African mathematics, among others, the book includes essays on Rationality, Logic and Mathematics, and the transfer of knowledge from East to West. The essays address the connections between science and culture and relate the mathematical practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay is well illustrated and contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both the history of science and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups.

Mathematics Elsewhere

Mathematics Elsewhere
Author: Marcia Ascher
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0691187649

Mathematics Elsewhere is a fascinating and important contribution to a global view of mathematics. Presenting mathematical ideas of peoples from a variety of small-scale and traditional cultures, it humanizes our view of mathematics and expands our conception of what is mathematical. Through engaging examples of how particular societies structure time, reach decisions about the future, make models and maps, systematize relationships, and create intriguing figures, Marcia Ascher demonstrates that traditional cultures have mathematical ideas that are far more substantial and sophisticated than is generally acknowledged. Malagasy divination rituals, for example, rely on complex algebraic algorithms. And some cultures use calendars far more abstract and elegant than our own. Ascher also shows that certain concepts assumed to be universal--that time is a single progression, for instance, or that equality is a static relationship--are not. The Basque notion of equivalence, for example, is a dynamic and temporal one not adequately captured by the familiar equal sign. Other ideas taken to be the exclusive province of professionally trained Western mathematicians are, in fact, shared by people in many societies. The ideas discussed come from geographically varied cultures, including the Borana and Malagasy of Africa, the Tongans and Marshall Islanders of Oceania, the Tamil of South India, the Basques of Western Europe, and the Balinese and Kodi of Indonesia. This book belongs on the shelves of mathematicians, math students, and math educators, and in the hands of anyone interested in traditional societies or how people think. Illustrating how mathematical ideas play a vital role in diverse human endeavors from navigation to social interaction to religion, it offers--through the vehicle of mathematics--unique cultural encounters to any reader.

Math Across Cultures

Math Across Cultures
Author: Maurice Bazin
Publisher: Exploratorium Store
Total Pages: 48
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780943451411

Cultural Foundations of Mathematics

Cultural Foundations of Mathematics
Author: C. K. Raju
Publisher: Pearson Education India
Total Pages: 536
Release: 2007
Genre: Calculus
ISBN: 9788131708712

The Volume Examines, In Depth, The Implications Of Indian History And Philosophy For Contemporary Mathematics And Science. The Conclusions Challenge Current Formal Mathematics And Its Basis In The Western Dogma That Deduction Is Infallible (Or That It Is Less Fallible Than Induction). The Development Of The Calculus In India, Over A Thousand Years, Is Exhaustively Documented In This Volume, Along With Novel Insights, And Is Related To The Key Sources Of Wealth-Monsoon-Dependent Agriculture And Navigation Required For Overseas Trade - And The Corresponding Requirement Of Timekeeping. Refecting The Usual Double Standard Of Evidence Used To Construct Eurocentric History, A Single, New Standard Of Evidence For Transmissions Is Proposed. Using This, It Is Pointed Out That Jesuits In Cochin, Following The Toledo Model Of Translation, Had Long-Term Opportunity To Transmit Indian Calculus Texts To Europe. The European Navigational Problem Of Determining Latitude, Longitude, And Loxodromes, And The 1582 Gregorian Calendar-Reform, Provided Ample Motivation. The Mathematics In These Earlier Indian Texts Suddenly Starts Appearing In European Works From The Mid-16Th Century Onwards, Providing Compelling Circumstantial Evidence. While The Calculus In India Had Valid Pramana, This Differed From Western Notions Of Proof, And The Indian (Algorismus) Notion Of Number Differed From The European (Abacus) Notion. Hence, Like Their Earlier Difficulties With The Algorismus, Europeans Had Difficulties In Understanding The Calculus, Which, Like Computer Technology, Enhanced The Ability To Calculate, Albeit In A Way Regarded As Epistemologically Insecure. Present-Day Difficulties In Learning Mathematics Are Related, Via Phylogeny Is Ontogeny , To These Historical Difficulties In Assimilating Imported Mathematics. An Appendix Takes Up Further Contemporary Implications Of The New Philosophy Of Mathematics For The Extension Of The Calculus, Which Is Needed To Handle The Infinities Arising In The Study Of Shock Waves And The Renormalization Problem Of Quantum Field Theory.

Mathematics and Art

Mathematics and Art
Author: Lynn Gamwell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 576
Release: 2016
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0691165289

This is a cultural history of mathematics and art, from antiquity to the present. Mathematicians and artists have long been on a quest to understand the physical world they see before them and the abstract objects they know by thought alone. Taking readers on a tour of the practice of mathematics and the philosophical ideas that drive the discipline, Lynn Gamwell points out the important ways mathematical concepts have been expressed by artists. Sumptuous illustrations of artworks and cogent math diagrams are featured in Gamwell's comprehensive exploration. Gamwell begins by describing mathematics from antiquity to the Enlightenment, including Greek, Islamic, and Asian mathematics. Then focusing on modern culture, Gamwell traces mathematicians' search for the foundations of their science, such as David Hilbert's conception of mathematics as an arrangement of meaning-free signs, as well as artists' search for the essence of their craft, such as Aleksandr Rodchenko's monochrome paintings. She shows that self-reflection is inherent to the practice of both modern mathematics and art, and that this introspection points to a deep resonance between the two fields: Kurt Gödel posed questions about the nature of mathematics in the language of mathematics and Jasper Johns asked "What is art?" in the vocabulary of art. Throughout, Gamwell describes the personalities and cultural environments of a multitude of mathematicians and artists, from Gottlob Frege and Benoît Mandelbrot to Max Bill and Xu Bing. Mathematics and Art demonstrates how mathematical ideas are embodied in the visual arts and will enlighten all who are interested in the complex intellectual pursuits, personalities, and cultural settings that connect these vast disciplines.

Cultures of Mathematics and Logic

Cultures of Mathematics and Logic
Author: Shier Ju
Publisher: Birkhäuser
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2016-08-10
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3319315021

This book gathers the proceedings of the conference "Cultures of Mathematics and Logic," held in Guangzhou, China. The event was the third in a series of interdisciplinary, international conferences emphasizing the cultural components of philosophy of mathematics and logic. It brought together researchers from many disciplines whose work sheds new light on the diversity of mathematical and logical cultures and practices. In this context, the cultural diversity can be diachronical (different cultures in different historical periods), geographical (different cultures in different regions), or sociological in nature.