Timeline for Did ancient mathematicians know Euler's characteristic for convex polyhedra?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 15, 2014 at 12:53 | vote | accept | Jochen Wengenroth | ||
| Jan 14, 2014 at 19:30 | comment | added | Pietro Majer | I expanded my comments in an answers. | |
| Jan 14, 2014 at 15:46 | comment | added | Stopple | @CarloBeenakker You might enjoy "The Forgotten Revolution" by Lucio Russo. | |
| Jan 14, 2014 at 14:55 | comment | added | Philippe Gaucher | @Amicable And also the mathematics of ancient Chineses. | |
| Jan 14, 2014 at 14:43 | comment | added | Amicable | I do wonder if the author researched into the Arabic world as well as the ancient Europeans. | |
| Jan 14, 2014 at 14:00 | comment | added | Pietro Majer | Also, if we even look at Archimedes' greatest discoveries, we have to admit it was not at all obvious that they should have all survived till our times. For instance, the recovery of the Method dates 1840, by chance, and it was only attributed to Archimedes in 1906. | |
| Jan 14, 2014 at 13:39 | comment | added | Pietro Majer | @Carlo: exact, we can only remark absence of evidence, which is why I think we can't say "no doubt, the answer is no". Absence of evidence, of course, does not allow "why-not conjectures" about lost ancient knowledges. But there is a number of examples that show that our knowledge of what the ancients knew is not that complete. One example for all: the story of the Shroeder numbers, in this beautiful short paper by R.Stanley math.mit.edu/~rstan/papers/hip.pdf | |
| Jan 14, 2014 at 13:37 | comment | added | Marc van Leeuwen | @CarloBeenakker: are you saying Richeson thoroughly and critically examines the empty set? | |
| Jan 14, 2014 at 13:24 | comment | added | Carlo Beenakker | @jwg -- I don't want to be glib, but what evidence of absence can one give in this case, other than absence of evidence? Richeson's monograph is a scholarly piece of work, which thoroughly and critically examines all available evidence for early discoveries of the polyhedron formula, and there is none. | |
| Jan 14, 2014 at 13:16 | comment | added | jwg | This seems to just assert the received answer 'no' to the question, rather than give any evidence in support of that answer. | |
| Jan 14, 2014 at 13:01 | comment | added | Carlo Beenakker | @PietroMajer --- good point, but has there been a dramatic loss of knowledge? I was under the impression that our knowledge of what the ancients knew is quite detailed. | |
| Jan 14, 2014 at 11:40 | comment | added | Pietro Majer | As usual, we can't be that sure about what Greek Hellenistic mathematicians knew, because of the subsequent dramatic loss of knowledge. The answer is unfortunately doomed to remain "no, as far as we know". | |
| Jan 14, 2014 at 10:24 | history | edited | Carlo Beenakker | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 347 characters in body
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| Jan 14, 2014 at 10:18 | history | answered | Carlo Beenakker | CC BY-SA 3.0 |