Isn’t this common knowledge that the Indians knew the theorem well before Pythagorus?
Yes and also I have a hard time believing the builders if the great pyramid didn’t understand it in some capacity either. They just didn’t have symbolic algebra to express it the way we do .
Given what other comments are saying about him (cult leader appropriating works of others), I think the west/europe would do well not to associate themselves with him.
Litteraly who is saying they wont vote for biden? These were the reluctant voters last time and they will be again.
Wut?
Someone is lost!
Cool but is there a better source on this than “I fucking love science”?
Wikipedia, Springer is even worse, the company of tabloid press.
“Springer Science” (scientific journals and books) is not to be confused with “Axel Springer” (Bild, Welt, politico).
But is from the same group, like Nestle in food.
No? As far as I can see they have no connection.
No, one is Axel Springer (tabloid shit), the other is Julius Springer (science stuff, founded around 100 years before the other Springer), they’re not related.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/jt.2009.16
This paper was sourced in the article
What I would like to know is if tablets like this are being scanned digitally into three dimensions so that they can be reproduced. I feel like everything we find from antiquity needs to be scanned this way. With humans constantly going to war destroying history, I’d hate the idea of losing things like this forever.
There’s also the https://cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/about Obviously, losing a dimension isn’t great but still pretty cool
Didn’t all kinds of antiquities get destroyed in Iraq? Totally irreplaceable stuff.
As you alluded, probably common in many places. How sad.
Yea ISIS and other extremist groups like to destroy evidence of their ancestor’s greatness for some reason.
Lesser sons of lesser sons
I recall there was at least one location which was 3D scanned and photographed in detail before ISIS destroyed it, so at least not all of it is lost.
https://apnews.com/general-news-travel-arts-and-entertainment-dbca5e23519f44c4a881c9cd69f41cd6
Oh man.
It’s only recently that the idea of “archaeology” has been a thing. Before then there were only “antiquarians” which were just looters.
Often they had royal backers. There’s a podcast series called “stuff the British stole”
There’s pretty well documented instances in the 1800s in Egypt, and pompeii.
Honestly the amount of amazing stuff that has just been “collected” is just eye watering.
A lot was destroyed but a lot of it was looted and and sold to sleazy collectors. Remember when the guy who owns Hobby Lobby got caught buying looted artifacts?
Still horrible, obviously, but at least there’s some hope looted items will be recovered.
I wonder how many artifacts could be recovered if we could search all the rich people mansions…
Most recently I remember it happening really really badly within Syria. Very intentional destruction. But yes, it happens all the time–Iraq included. With the technology we have now, we can preserve a lot of it (digitally at least).
I hate how it’s so damn hard to find these things and yet so easy to destroy it.
I knew Pythagoras was smart but I never knew he invented time travel. So cool!
And he invented plagiarism too!
nah he probably stole that as well.
Poor poor Plagiar, everything he invented people stole and took credit for.
The Plagiarian theorem is a real bummer.
I took the opposite tack.
You ain’t shit, Pythagoras! You just wrote it down, you didn’t figure it out, you absolute fucking fraud. We’re taking your immortality back!
Quick! Change all the textbooks to “clay tablet theorem”!
Why not call it the Summerian Theorem ? Or Arabic/Persian/Philistine Triangulation Theorem ?
People used to live longer back then, just look at the bible.
It always seemed weird to me that it would be formally developed so late. Like I’ve taken multiple trigonometry courses and can’t even define trigonometry let alone make sense of most of it, but the Pythagorean theorem is a purely intuitive thing everyone does regularly. The first person to take a diagonal shortcut while walking understood it. It should have been the first thing mathematics codified after basic arithmetic.
I imagine it’s been developed and lost periodically, and some people are averse to irrational numbers. Greece just had continual credit in our intellectual pedigree (as opposed to, say, the Babylonians who had more advanced trig than the Greeks before them and the Greeks were aware of them in some ways).
I think you also need a lot of rectangles and squares to find it necessary. I imagine buildings, but even today a lot of materials are cut to fit (also, the building I am in is not rectangular along any dimension). Maybe legal rectangular plots of land? Idk
There is lots of evidence of the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras. The attribution of the rule to him comes centuries after he lived. So likely he worked on codifying and proving the relationship using the Greek deductive and axiomatic system.
the Pythagorean theorem is a purely intuitive thing everyone does regularly.
Excuse me, what?
I take it you haven’t read Plato?
It is if you needed to collect taxes and wanted a way to measure 📐
The first person to take a diagonal shortcut while walking understood it.
Taking a diagonal shortcut means that you understand
a + b > c. That’s a far leap from being able to prove thata^2 + b^2 = c^2.
This makes a strong case on the discovery side of the discovery vs. invention controversy.
Ironically, my dad idolized Pythagoras and the notion of discovering a scientific fundamental to be remembered for thousands of years, for which the secret is not to actually do science, but raise a cult of scientists who attribute their inventions to you. Like Thomas Edison.
Not really. The Pythagorean theorem (or whomever you want to credit for it) assumes plane geometry. It’s not true in general.
Plane geometry is the invention that makes all of the math work. The earth is not a flat plane (not even close to flat pretty much anywhere). If you want to do Pythagorean-like calculations between cities on earth, for example, you’ll get a much more accurate result with spherical geometry operating on geodesics. Unfortunately, spherical triangles not obey the Pythagorean theorem!
🎶 They say Thomas Edison he’s the man to bring us into this century
And that man is me…
raise a cult
*cough* Elon Musk *cough*
Edison, Watson/Crick, Musk, Jobs…I hope today it’s much harder to get away with being an idea stealing tool bag since the internet has competent archivers, sans working under a company that owns anything you make.
It was most of the Greeks. We credit Democritus with atomism even though the Greeks said it came from an earlier Phoenician, Mochus of Sidon. Even Democritus’s teacher doesn’t get credit.
Democritus wrote it down in a way that survived.
That’s it.
What a classic situation. Some hype man taking credit.
another nail in whitey’s coffin. when will this woke history end
Pythagoras wasn’t white. 😎
and another nail in whitey’s coffin. when will this woke history end
I don’t know, this painting of him looks pretty white (please ignore that it was made in the 1920s by an American who had probably never been to Greece)
people joined a cult because of this theorem. that must be awkward
Ok so
because understanding the history of our technology gives anthropologists a better way to determine what we were capable of in our earliest stages of civilization. because understanding the history of us is important to understanding who we are. do you really not see the value in knowledge?
Cuneiform scripts were frequently coppied by scribes, so the theorem could be even older
I think that this theorem is at least as old as the pyramids.
The recent “Fall of Civilizations” podcast talks a lot about the history of the pyramids. They may still have known a lot about geometery, but the slopes and angles involved in the pyramid building seem to have been trial and error as much as anything
A few days ago I was building a Lego set and had to go back 10 steps because of a mistake and that made me very angry.
The pyraamids are way more complex and accurate as been build only by trial and error. It’s architects knew exactly what they were doing and also geometric theorema way more complex as the one of “Phytagoras”, as shown also in other ancient buildings, which are still difficult to reproduce by modern architects.
What makes you say that? I’m not an expert. Accurate geometry or not, the pyramids are pretty cool. What about them means it couldn’t have been trial and error?
https://www.si.edu/spotlight/ancient-egypt/pyramid
About halfway up, however, the angle of incline decreases from over 51 degrees to about 43 degrees, and the sides rise less steeply, causing it to be known as the Bent Pyramid. The change in angle was probably made during construction to give the building more stability
Yes, the bent pyramid, but that say nothing, maybe simply a design of an bad architect. They always exist, even today.
A handful of people can be credited with discovering the theorem prior to Pythagoras, this isn’t the first time this has come up, and incidentally there is almost no evidence to suggest Pythagoras did.
Good to know! TBH, I’m specifically excited to see it was present in the fertile crescent. I really like clay tablets.
Quite possible. Ancient Greeks really liked Akkadians.
Quite possible.
I’m not sure I understand this statement? Isn’t that what the article says?
Oh, right.
I feel like at this point I’ve seen this story in 1,000 year old reposts.
