Editors: Karine Chemla, Agathe Keller, Christine Proust
“Offers an approach to the diversity of scientific cultures based on case studies dealing with mathematical sources”.
“Links the history of mathematics to the history of ancient worlds.”
”Sheds a new light on the history of place-value systems.”
Part of the book series: Why the Sciences of the Ancient World Matter (WSAWM, volume 6)
The various chapters focus on the different ways and contexts of shaping numbers and quantities, and on the procedures applied to them. The book places special emphasis on the processes of emergence of place-value number systems, evidenced in the three geographical areas under study All these features yield essential elements that will enable historians of mathematics to further capture the diversity of computation practices in their contexts, whereas previous historical approaches have tended to emphasize elements that displayed uniformity within “civilizational” blocks. The book includes editions and translations of texts, some of them published here for the first time, maps, and conventions for editions of ancient texts. It thereby offers primary sources and methodological tools for teaching and learning.
The volume is aimed at historians and philosophers of science and mathematics, historians of the ancient worlds, historians of economics, sinologists, indologists, assyriologists, as well as undergraduate, graduate students and teachers in mathematics, the history and philosophy of science and mathematics, and in the history of ancient worlds”.
:: Springer Cham, collection ”Why the Sciences of the Ancient World Matter”
:: 2 January 2023, pages : X, 765 (284 b/w illustrations, 48 illustrations in color)
:: DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98361-1
:: Hardcover ISBN978-3-030-98360-4, Softcover ISBN978-3-030-98363-5, eBook ISBN978-3-030-98361-1Published: 01 January 2023 ; Series ISSN 2662-9933, Series E-ISSN 2662-9941
:: Topics History of Science, Epistemology, History of Mathematical Sciences, Asian History, History of South Asia
TABLE OF CONTENT (To pdf)
- Pages i-x
- 1. Cultures of Computation and Quantification in the Ancient World: An Introduction, p. 1
Karine Chemla
Part I: Shaping Quantities and Relating them to Numbers
- 2. Carrying Bricks and Bundling Reed in Theory and Practice, p. 143
Wolfgang Heimpel
- 3. Measuring Grain in Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia: Form, Use, and Control of the Bariga Container in the Twenty-First Century BCE, p. 171
Walther Sallaberger
- 4. Volume, Brickage and Capacity in Old Babylonian Mathematical Texts from Southern Mesopotamia, p. 197
Christine Proust
Part II: Interpreting Numbers and Quantities in Texts
- 5. Place-Value Notations in the Ur III Period: Marginal Numbers in Administrative Texts, p. 267
Xiaoli Ouyang, Christine Proust
- 6. The Nazbalum in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia: An Absolute Number or an Administrative Tool?, p. 357
Robert Middeke-Conlin
PartIII: Working with Operations and Algorithms
- 7. Computing Tools and Representations of Arithmetic, p. 401
Baptiste Mélès
- 8. Working on and with Division in Early China, Third Century BCE—Seventh Century CE, p. 433
Karine 力娜 Chemla 林
- 9. Multiplying Integers: On the Diverse Practices of Medieval Sanskrit Authors, p. 495
Agathe Keller, Catherine Morice-Singh
Part IV: Different Cultures of Computation and Quantification
- 11. The Characteristics of Mathematical Methods in the Wu Cao Suanjing and Its Social Background, p. 603
Dahai Zou, Wei Chen
- 12. Weighing Units and Weights in the Context of Trade Between Upper Mesopotamia and Anatolia (Nineteenth and Eighteenth Centuries BCE), p. 647
Cécile Michel
- 13. Quantification and Computation in the Mathematical Texts of Old Babylonian Diyala, p. 691
Carlos Gonçalves
- Annex A : conventions, p. 731
- Annex B : Maps, p. 743
- Index, p.747
Keywords: History of Mathematical Cultures – History of Administrative and Economic Practices – History and Philosophy of Number – Cultures of Computation – Operations and Algorithm
