Circle measurements in ancient China
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Circle measurements in ancient China
zbMATH Open document ID: 0632.01002
DOI: 10.1016/0315-0860(86)90055-8
author: Lay-Yong Lam
author: Tian Se Ang
published in: Historia Mathematica
publication date: 1986-01-01T00:00:00Z
review text: The present paper gives a thorough presentation of the early history of \(\pi\) in China but, now and again, the authors have a tendency to modernize ancient texts. For example: a translation such as ``divide it by 4 to obtain 17037087366'' (p. 377) is certainly not faithful, given that in the Jiuzhang suanshu, numbers are always written out ``in full'', with absolutely nothing corresponding to our modern symbol ``0''; a statement such as ``since the Warring States period, counting rods, manifesting the place value of a decimal system, were used for computation'' would, at least, deserve elements of proof, documentation concerning arithmetical procedures in China many centuries before our era being quasi-inexistant. Lastly, the rendering of the title Zhuishu by ``Method of mathematical composition'' (i.e. The Almagest ?) (p. 329) seems misleading; the authors should have relied there on Shen Gua's explanation of such a difficult term (cf. the jottings nos. 221 and 166 of the Mengqi bitan).
reviewed by: Jean-Claude Martzloff
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A25
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 28-03
zbMATH DE Number: 4027391
zbMATH Keywords: Mengqi bitan
Wikidata QID: Q28111509
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: 0315-0860(86)90055-8
OpenAlex ID: W4205271670
cites work: Q4079536
cites work: Q5820512
cites work: The Geometrical Basis of the Ancient Chinese Square-Root Method
cites work: The Chinese concept of Cavalieri's principle and its applications
cites work: Q3280103
cites work: Q5815583
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 4027391