Writings On Reckoning
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Writings On Reckoning
The ''Book on Numbers and Computation'' (), or the ''Writings on Reckoning'', is one of the earliest known Chinese mathematical treatises. It was written during the early Western Han dynasty, sometime between 202 BC and 186 BC.Liu et al. (2003), 9. It was preserved among the Zhangjiashan Han bamboo texts and contains similar mathematical problems and principles found in the later Eastern Han period text of ''The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art''. Discovery The text was found in tomb M247 of the burial grounds near Zhangjiashan, Jiangling County, in Hubei province, excavated in December–January 1983–1984. This tomb belonged to an anonymous civil servant in early West Han dynasty. In the tomb were 1200 bamboo strips written in ink. Originally the strips were bound together with string, but the string had rotted away and it took Chinese scholars 17 years to piece together the strips. As well as the mathematical work the strips covered government statutes, law repor ...
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Chinese Mathematics
Mathematics in China emerged independently by the 11th century BCE. The Chinese independently developed a real number system that includes significantly large and negative numbers, more than one numeral system ( base 2 and base 10), algebra, geometry, number theory and trigonometry. Since the Han Dynasty, as diophantine approximation being a prominent numerical method, the Chinese made substantial progress on polynomial evaluation. Algorithms like regula falsi and expressions like continued fractions are widely used and have been well-documented ever-since. They deliberately find the principal ''n''th root of positive numbers and the roots of equations. The major texts from the period, ''The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art'' and the ''Book on Numbers and Computation'' gave detailed processes for solving various mathematical problems in daily life. All procedures were computed using a counting board in both texts, and they included inverse elements as well as Euclidean divi ...
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Liu Xin (scholar)
Liu Xin (; c. 50 BCE – 23 CE), courtesy name Zijun (), was a Chinese astronomer, mathematician, historian, librarian and politician during the Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 9 CE) and Xin Dynasty (9 – 23 CE). He later changed his name to Liu Xiu () due to the naming taboo of Emperor Ai of Han. He was the son of Confucian scholar Liu Xiang (77 – 6 BCE) and an associate of other prominent thinkers such as the philosopher Huan Tan (c. 43 BCE – 28 CE). Liu founded the Old Text school of Confucianism. Early life Liu Xin was the son of Confucian scholar Liu Xiang (77 – 6 BCE). Liu was a distant relative of Liu Bang, the founder of the Han dynasty, and was thus a member of the ruling dynastic clan (the Liu family). Liu Xin's paternal grandfather ranked as a marquess. Librarian As a curator of the imperial library he was the first to establish a library classification system and the first book notation system. At this time the library catalog was written on ...
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Han Dynasty Literature
Han may refer to: Ethnic groups * Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group. ** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese people who may be fully or partially Han Chinese descent. * Han Minjok, or Han people (): the Korean native name referring to Koreans. * Hän: one of the First Nations peoples of Canada. Former states * Han (Western Zhou state) (韓) (11th century BC – 757 BC), a Chinese state during the Spring and Autumn period * Han (state) (韓) (403–230  BC), a Chinese state during the Warring States period * Han dynasty (漢/汉) (206 BC – 220 AD), a dynasty split into two eras, Western Han and Eastern Han ** Shu Han (蜀漢) (221–263), a Han Chinese dynasty that existed during the Three Kingdoms Period * Former Zhao (304–329), one of the Sixteen Kingdoms, known as Han (漢) before 319 * Cheng Han (成漢) (304–347), one of the S ...
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Han Dynasty Texts
Han may refer to: Ethnic groups * Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group. ** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese people who may be fully or partially Han Chinese descent. * Han Minjok, or Han people (): the Korean native name referring to Koreans. * Hän: one of the First Nations peoples of Canada. Former states * Han (Western Zhou state) (韓) (11th century BC – 757 BC), a Chinese state during the Spring and Autumn period * Han (state) (韓) (403–230  BC), a Chinese state during the Warring States period * Han dynasty (漢/汉) (206 BC – 220 AD), a dynasty split into two eras, Western Han and Eastern Han ** Shu Han (蜀漢) (221–263), a Han Chinese dynasty that existed during the Three Kingdoms Period * Former Zhao (304–329), one of the Sixteen Kingdoms, known as Han (漢) before 319 * Cheng Han (成漢) (304–347), one of the Sixte ...
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Mathematics Manuscripts
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics with the major subdisciplines of number theory, algebra, geometry, and analysis, respectively. There is no general consensus among mathematicians about a common definition for their academic discipline. Most mathematical activity involves the discovery of properties of abstract objects and the use of pure reason to prove them. These objects consist of either abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicsentities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. A ''proof'' consists of a succession of applications of deductive rules to already established results. These results include previously proved theorems, axioms, andin case of abstraction from naturesome basic properties that are considered true starting points of t ...
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Archaeological Artifacts Of China
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. It is usually considered an independent academic discipline, but may also be classified as part of anthropology (in North America – the four-field approach), history or geography. Archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology is distinct from palaeontology, which is the study of fossil remains. Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for which, by definition, there are no written records. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the adve ...
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Wu Wenjun
Wu Wenjun ( zh, s=吴文俊; 12 May 1919 – 7 May 2017), also commonly known as Wu Wen-tsün, was a Chinese mathematician, historian, and writer. He was an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), best known for the Wu's method of characteristic set. Biography Wu's Ancestral home (China), ancestral hometown was Jiashan, Zhejiang. He was born in Shanghai and graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1940. In 1945, Wu taught several months at Zhijiang Campus, Zhejiang University, Hangchow University (later merged into Zhejiang University) in Hangzhou. In 1947, he went to France for further study at the University of Strasbourg. In 1949, he received his PhD, for his thesis ''Sur les classes caractéristiques des structures fibrées sphériques'', written under the direction of Charles Ehresmann. Afterwards, he did some work in Paris with René Thom and discovered the Wu class and Wu formula in algebraic topology. In 1951 he was appointed to a post at Peking U ...
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New Scientist
''New Scientist'' is a magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organisation publishes a monthly Dutch-language edition. First published on 22 November 1956, ''New Scientist'' has been available in online form since 1996. Sold in retail outlets (paper edition) and on subscription (paper and/or online), the magazine covers news, features, reviews and commentary on science, technology and their implications. ''New Scientist'' also publishes speculative articles, ranging from the technical to the philosophical. ''New Scientist'' was acquired by Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) in March 2021. History Ownership The magazine was founded in 1956 by Tom Margerison, Max Raison and Nicholas Harrison as ''The New Scientist'', with Issue 1 on 22 November 1956, priced at one shilling (a twentieth of a pound in pre-decimal UK cu ...
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Joseph Dauben
Joseph Warren Dauben (born 29 December 1944, Santa Monica) is a Herbert H. Lehman Distinguished Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center, Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He obtained his PhD from Harvard University. His fields of expertise are the history of science, the history of mathematics, the scientific revolution, the Sociology of the history of science, sociology of science, intellectual history, the 17th and 18th centuries, the History of science and technology in China, history of Chinese science, and the history of botany. Positions Dauben is a 1980 Guggenheim fellow. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences (since 1982).Faculty profile
, Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chine ...
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Needham Research Institute
The Needham Research Institute (NRI; zh , t = 李約瑟研究所 ), located on the grounds of Robinson College, in Cambridge, England, is a centre for research into the history of science, technology and medicine in East Asia. The institute is named after the biochemist and historian Joseph Needham, who initiated the ''Science and Civilisation in China'' series. The current director is Mei Jianjun, a noted archaeo-metallurgist. The organization was founded as the East Asian History of Science Trust in August 1968. In June 1983 the trustees conferred the title Needham Research Institute. The Trustees of the NRI is a registered charity. The institute grew out of Needham's research collection, which was originally housed in Gonville and Caius College, where he was Master until his retirement in 1976. After several moves, it moved into its current purpose-built structure in Robinson College in 1991. The building was designed in the Chinese style, and has been described by its archi ...
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Christopher Cullen
Christopher Cullen is an English sinologist. He has an MA from University of Oxford in engineering and a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in classical Chinese. He is Director Emeritus of the Needham Research Institute and General Editor of the Science and Civilisation in China series, succeeding Joseph Needham. His own area of research is the Han Dynasty and he translated the Book on Numbers and Computation The ''Book on Numbers and Computation'' (), or the ''Writings on Reckoning'', is one of the earliest known Chinese mathematical treatises. It was written during the early Western Han dynasty, sometime between 202 BC and 186 BC.Liu et al. (2003), ... into English. Publications * * * --, and Vivienne Lo, eds., Medieval Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts'' Taylor & Francis, Needham Research Institute Series, 2004. . References External links * Christopher Cullen,Making sense of the cosmos in ancient China" Cambridge University. { ...
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Zhoubi Suanjing
The ''Zhoubi Suanjing'' () is one of the oldest Chinese mathematical texts. "Zhou" refers to the ancient Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE); "Bì" literally means "thigh", but in the book refers to the gnomon of a sundial. The book is dedicated to astronomical observation and calculation. ''Suan Jing'' or "classic of arithmetics" were appended in later time to honor the achievement of the book in mathematics. This book dates from the period of the Zhou dynasty, yet its compilation and addition of materials continued into the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE). It is an anonymous collection of 246 problems encountered by the Duke of Zhou and his astronomer and mathematician, Shang Gao. Each question has stated their numerical answer and corresponding arithmetic algorithm. The book also makes use of the Pythagorean Theorem on various occasions and might also contain a geometric proof of the theorem for the case of the 3-4-5 triangle (but the procedure works for a general right triangle ...
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