The Language of the Universe - movie review

“The Language of Universe” is one of the 1-hour episodes in the series of “The Story of Maths” by Professor Marcus Du Sautoy who travelled around the world to assess and review the history of mathematics, to how did it exist, the reason of its existence in respective areas of the world and its relevance to understanding the relationship of the rules and patterns of nature to us. In this episode mathematics of the ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece were explored.

Mathematics made sense to natural patterns. Its existence started in Egypt around 6000 BC. Egyptians had to use mathematics for their taxation, preservation of the dead and estimation of the next flooding of the Nile. They use their body part for measurements, such as calculating areas and they were also brilliant in problem solving. In addition, mathematics played an important role in the market for transactions. Shapes attest application of knowledge. They were the first to give an accurate value of π. Another brilliant innovation of Egyptians was the pyramids with which golden ration can be used. They used knots to obtain a right triangle. All in all, the Egyptians used a decimal system which is based from ten fingers of the hand. They had no place value and did not have something to represent zero because they don’t have to.

In Mesopotamia, they used the Babylonian Base 60 number system in counting for time and observing the cycles of the moon. They found this number as remarkable since it is a number that is divisible to 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. They were the first to formulate the quadratic equation in measuring the area of the land for methods of irrigation. They were also the first to have a concept of zero but they didn’t really have a representation of it. In addition, they were also the first to recognize place value system.

The Greeks were the first to devise the power of proof having a deductive system of axioms, creating theorems from an existing theorem. Eventually, it was found out that philosophy and mathematics have been merged. This is simply because of logic. Pythagoras, Plato, Alexandria, Euclid and Archimedes were of great influence to development of mathematics. Though Pythagoras had not left any data or verifications, his ideas were still evidently being considered up to now. He relied more on geometry rather than numbers in his ideas about the triangle. On the other hand, Plato believed that mathematics is bedrock of knowledge. The more knowledge you have, the more you are into reality. It can be evidently seen that these people had contributed a lot in making mathematics a tool for assessing analytical subjects of today’s generation.