The Dawn of Math

In this modern age math plays a vital role in our society. As a student, I for one can attest to this and have to accept the fact that I cannot live my life the way it is without math. I don’t know why I, along with many individuals in this globe, find math as a difficult subject when in every dealings we make we apply the essence of math one way or the other. I couldn’t directly connect the thought of a difficult math to the statement presented by the narrator of the documentary entitled The Story of Maths: Language of the Universe which says that “math is hardwired in our brains”. But as I watched the documentary I was able to affirm that math is really hardwired in my brain.

                The documentary begins with the Ancient Egyptian civilization and their mathematics. Back then their society is not as sophisticated as today, the ancient Egyptians only thinks of how they can survive life on a daily basis. As a result they paid attention to things they can exploit in order to survive such as agriculture. They developed math to help them predict the next inundation, determine the land area of their fields, quantify the total harvest, and account for the income of the kingdom. As time passed by the ancient Egyptians showed interest to geometry enabling them to construct the great pyramids which is considered today as a world wonder. Through observations they were able to apply the Pythagorean Theorem to aid them in making such an ambitious project.  Another big contribution of the Egyptians in mathematics is pi. Although there is no authentic reason or explanation as to how the value for pi was discovered I would say that the explanation presented in the documentary almost made me slap my face out of disbelief. I mean who would’ve thought that an accidental discovery made during one hot afternoon under the shades of palms would have such an impact on today’s society right?. Such transition from a nomadic lifestyle to a civilized one was catalyzed by their development of their own mathematics and as a result math was able to enhance the bureaucracy of ancient Egypt making them as one of the influential empires of the old times.

                Another civilization from the old time that was discussed in the documentary was the Babylonian civilization. The Babylonian civilization, in my honest opinion, was not so creative in establishing their number system since they only had two figures to represent their numbers. But even though they were not as creative as the Egyptians, they were able to contribute their base 60 number system to modern math. This base 60 number system was derived from observing the lunar activity in the night sky they discovered that the number 60is in harmony with their number system. Now this base 60 is now used word wide to tell the time. At first I asked myself why 60? Can’t it be twenty five, fifty or a hundred? According to the documentary the number 60 had such characteristics that it can be divided with many numbers yielding whole numbers as a quotient (please don’t ask me to enumerate I still have lots and lots of papers to do so if you’re bored then do it yourself).  Another important contribution of the Babylonians is the basic concept of the quadratic equation which they applied in determining the area of a particular field. They used closed shapes like squares in a very ingenious way to do this thereby laying out the foundation for the quadratic equation we now use today.

                The third civilization that was featured in the documentary is the Greek civilization. The Greeks civilization, in the light of mathematics, can be said as the turning point in the story of mathematics for this is the period where people began to establish the many concepts into theorems. One of the great people in this age was Pythagoras, and yes he was the one who formulated the Pythagorean Theorem that the ancient Egyptians and we of the modern world use. The people from this age were very curious (or bored) to the point that they would investigate about geometry, about the relationship between this and that and turn whatever it is that they observe into theorems.

                It’s quite funny how many people (okay fine I admit including me) hate this subject saying that math is difficult when unlike these old civilizations we are enjoying the fruits of their labor ( or boredom). They lived long before us enough to record every happening, create theorems, and determine the relationship between things mathematically which enabled them to survive their everyday lives. They didn’t have calculators yet they were able to solve problems, they didn’t have rulers yet they were able to measure, they didn’t have what we now have but why did they persevere? Another big question is given the developments of calculators why is it that we find math difficult when we always do math unconsciously. I hope that by enrolling in this subject I would be able to answer this question myself after all I have one semester to do so and this is just the beginning.