History of mathematics in China: A factor in world history and a source for new questions
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: History of mathematics in China: A factor in world history and a source for new questions
zbMATH Open document ID: 0905.01002
author: Karine Chemla
published in: Documenta Mathematica
publication date: 1998-08-06T00:00:00Z
full work available at URL: https://eudml.org/doc/229761
full work available at URL: Chemla.MAN.html
review text: This article, whose bibliography (2 pages) contains almost exlusively previous articles by the sole author during the last 11 years, and no mention of the numerous Chinese books on the subject released during this period, deals with the Jiuzhang suanshu (JZSS), the famous Nine Chapters of the Han dynasty and its posterity, Chinese and non-Chinese (the title of the article is not explicit). First, the author gives succinct but interesting precisions on the socio-economic context of the JZSS. Second, she proceeds at length to explain Chinese algorithms and their proofs in a non-historical and mainly mathematical and formal way, contrasting with the beginning of the article. On the whole, there is a tendency to present and explain Chinese results in an unhistorical, formal and above all overgeneralized way, for example when the Chinese ``Gaussian elimination method'' for system of linear equations is said to cover ``all possible cases'' of such equations. All this is strongly reminiscent of the content of hundredth of Chinese articles and even books on the JZSS, published unceasingly during more than 20 years, from 1980. Third, in its own idiosyncratic way, the author repeats well-known conclusions, or rather theories, more or less similar to those propounded by \textit{Joseph Needham} at the end of the volume 3 of his \textit{Science and Civilisation in China} (Cambridge, 1959; Zbl 0099.24101): the famous historian of Chinese science and technology tends to view Chinese mathematics not as an isolated body of knowledge but as a mathematical corpus situated at the origin of other medieval mathematics and inserted in an active way in the wider current of world mathematics. This is approximately true in a general and imprecise way but problems arise when questions of mutual influence are precisely discussed: the same theme -- root extraction, Horner's methods, decimals, etc. -- recur again and again everywhere, as it is well known but nobody has still explained in a satis…
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A25
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A30
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A35
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A45
zbMATH DE Number: 1184415
zbMATH Keywords: Jiuzhang suanshu
zbMATH Keywords: Liu Hui
zbMATH Keywords: algorithms
reviewed by: Jean-Claude Martzloff
MaRDI profile type: Publication
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1184415