Who invented mathematics? – 08/08/2023 – Marcelo Viana

This week, Folhinha invited children to think about “who invented this math thing”. Many older readers must ask themselves the same question…

Mathematical thinking is certainly as old as humanity. The idea of ​​number, for example, arose from the act of counting, which we have practiced since the beginning. Incidentally, we know that other animals are capable of counting, and I have already commented here that certain bees know how to distinguish even numbers from odd ones.

Other mathematical concepts, such as shape, magnitude or pattern, were also discovered from the daily experiences of our distant ancestors. Among them, sky observation: understanding and predicting the movement of the stars and their implications for our destinies has always been a great motivation for the advancement of mathematics.

The oldest known mathematical object, the Ishango bone, discovered in Central Africa in 1950, dates to 20,000 years ago. It features incisions that appear to be counting records, although some experts believe they are lists of special numbers, including some primes. Others suggest that this is astronomical data or even some kind of Paleolithic “slide rule”.

When humanity entered history, through the invention of writing, it brought mathematics with it. The first mathematical texts –the Plimpton manuscript 322 (Babylon, 2000 BC), the Moscow papyrus (Egypt, 1900 BC) and the famous Rhind papyrus (Egypt, 1800 BC)– list several problems of arithmetic, geometry and algebra and introduce some ideas familiar to our students, such as the number π (pi) and the Pythagorean theorem.

For millennia, mathematics developed on the banks of the Nile, in Egypt, and the Tigris and Euphrates, in Mesopotamia, always as a tool to solve everyday problems and help to understand the world around us. Pythagoras (570 – 495 BC), this one, came much later. Even though he didn’t discover the theorem that made him famous, he made many other important contributions. Among them, the very word “mathematics”, from the Greek mathema, which means “learning, study, knowledge”.

It has been inherited by almost all modern languages, with one surprising exception. In Dutch, mathematics is called “wiskunde”, a word invented by the scientist Simon Stevin (1548–1620): “wis” has to do with certainty, accuracy, while “kunde” refers to art, study.

So mathematics is the art of being right. Not cool?

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