Re: Medieval mathematics well just

SolomonW <SolomonW@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote:
In article <ga76ov$5g$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, gans@xxxxxxxxx says...
SolomonW <SolomonW@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote:
Renia here is your first topic from me.

Anyone here had a play at trying to reproduce some of these
mathematician methods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_equation#Cardano.27s_method

I was quite impressed.

It is impressive. Sadly, it seems much more renaissance
to me than medieval.


It may just be medieval as the actual solution that Cardano arrived is
the same as Scipione del Ferro. Scipione del Ferro might have solved it
before 1500. We do not know


It was the development of solving cubic equations that led to the
acceptance of mathematicians of complex numbers in the 1500s.

Yes. Though they'd been sniffing around them ever since
the development of the solutio to quadratic equations way
back when.

It is amazing how rapdily one needs new abstractions as
one delves deeper and deeper into math.

Indeed.

To someone like myself although I confess I have forgotten much of my
mathematics, it has both beauty and aesthetics. For example I find this
equation magnificent.

e^(i*pi)=-1

That's probably the most beautiful equation in mathematics.


The period from the middle 1500s on for the next 150 or so
years was exceptionally fruitful It was during this
period that European mathematics began to outstrip that
of the rest of the world.


I doubt any non European mathematician could have done something like
this about the 1500s.

It truly is a magnificence piece of work.

--
--- Paul J. Gans
.