Foreign Influences on Europe.

Hello Chilbudios

About Trignometry, again, the greek chord method is not the same as the current sin and cosine functions, also the greeks approach to trignometry was through pure geometry, the cosine law you mentioned Euclid proved deals only with geometric quantities not trignometric ones, the essence of trignometry is the use of angles to udentify unknow geometric quantities and after that use them in applications. Greek trignometry was primative in the sense that they only dealt ith right angle triangles only. Muslims not only developed the theory independent of the Greeks, with Indian elements, but also did things that made trignometry what it is today, extenion to all geometric formations, Spherical trignometry and elementry non-Euclidean geometry. also, Unlike the Greeks, the extensively used it in Chartography and other application not related to the original purpose of Greek trignometry which was astronomy. As for the Euler Identity you wrote earlier while this is a part of trignometry it is just the complex form of it, even if they discovered it it will only be 1885 till a real application of complex trignometric identities will be found, in electrical engineering, my own turf. discovering Euler's identity is not the deifning relationship in tignometry. Finally, when I said that trignometry was mainly developed by muslim mathematicians I wan't  lying. 4 of the 6 trignometric functions, the method for calculating tables of those functions, the main identities and some 50-100 different relations in both spherical and plain trignometry were proven by them, and almost all of them are the only ones that are extensively used right now. The exotic relations don't have any application so I didn't count them.

Originally posted by Al Jassas About Trignometry, again, the greek chord method is not the same as the current sin and cosine functions

Neither is the Indian/Islamic sine the same as the our sine function. The Islamic sine was merely a half-chord in a circle of fixed radius, not the ratio we know today. If you look actually in Islamic sine tables you will notice they have values larger than 1, unlike the modern sines.

Edited by Chilbudios - 05-May-2008 at 17:47

Originally posted by Richard XIII It's not important who discovered this or that but who made the discoveries available for the usual people, and Europe did it.

.....

Well, without those initial "actual" discoveries there would be no intermediary between "usual people" and that science either. So it is then imporant, is it not?
You cannot come from B to C without A.

If B is the intermediary as you claim, then A is as important as A makes it possible for B to have something to actually transmit to C.

Originally posted by gcle2003 ... Crediting a 'civilisation' with 'inventing' or 'discovering' the natural products that surrounded them in particular is kind of silly.

Originally posted by Al Jassas .... Also, the rest of the quantities that you attribute them to european mathematicians are actually, as Gerolamo Cardano noted of Regiomontanus so called founder of trignometry, the same that the Arabs found yet those scientists, like Regi, plagiarised them.

Originally posted by pinguin Originally posted by es_bih I have come across more than on a few occasions of these inaccuracies here in the American school system. Even at the college level. I have had a Mexican-American professor of Spanish studies that basically gave me attitude for the rest of the course when I mentioned a few things on Islamic Spain's advances, which he completely omitted. ...   That's strange, but I assume that Mexican-American professor was born in the United States rather than in Mexico.   I believe so, because in the Iberian and also Ibero-American culture there is lot of respect with respect to the Islamic Spain, and all the knowledge the Arabs and other Muslims introduced in Spain.   It is a well known secret that Arabic dances, Arab food and Music are usually very welcome in countries with Spanish roots, and in many ways we know we have more that something in common with the people of the Middle East.   By the way, my real "human" name is Omar, and not "pinguin" . And I have that name honouring Persian mathematician and poet Omar Kayyam. But I am as Hispanic as someone could be

No he moved here to the US. But he is very Spaish oriented, he did a lot of study and lived in Spain at the time during his doctorate. I am not sure why. I did not understand underestimating seven hundred years of history.

Originally posted by pinguin   It is a well known secret

Originally posted by gcle2003 Originally posted by es_bih No he moved here to the US. But he is very Spaish oriented, he did a lot of study and lived in Spain at the time during his doctorate. I am not sure why. I did not understand underestimating seven hundred years of history.   The importance of any historical trend or influence can be over-estimated and it can be under-estimated.   In my experience of Spaniards (actually from Spain) they do tend to underestimate the lasting influence of the Muslim occupation: it's a simple matter of national pride, Spaniards seeing themselves as Aragonese, Castilian, Basque, Catalan or whatever, but nonetheless Europeans resenting being seen as 'Moorish'.   To get some kind of objectivity into the discussion you really have to rely on people who have no reason to be biassed over the issue.

I understand that there are sentiments, but there is also academic credibility. A PhD should not be so childish to assume that he can act as the lowest common denominator. I've seen more objectivity here; from what I have seen a lot of students have had some issues with his presentation style.

Originally posted by Al Jassas All the writing that I have read and all the tables I have seen prove that the Arabic Jayb (sine, cosine, tan,sec  are literal translations of their Arabic equivalents) and other trignometric functions are exactly the same as the ones we have right now. The difference you may think it is comes from maybe that Arabs used the sexagecimal rather than the decimal system in calculating the quantities. But if you read carefully muslim scientists introduced the wide use of the decimal system (after the chinese) and Al-Kashi used only that system in his calculations. Also, the rest of the quantities that you attribute them to european mathematicians are actually, as Gerolamo Cardano noted of Regiomontanus so called founder of trignometry, the same that the Arabs found yet those scientists, like Regi, plagiarised them.

First, let's establish one thing. Regiomontanus' plagiarism of Islamic and Greek scholars is not essentially different that of Islamic scholar's plagiarism of Hindu and Greek scholars. Don't use heavy words to minimize others' contribution because it will only reveal an ugly agenda on your side.

Edited by Chilbudios - 06-May-2008 at 17:05

Regarding these ''who contributed to whom'', ''who originally invented what'' and ''how these contributions are lowly regarded and taught in society'' kind of issues, I was thinking, there are some characteristics particular to many people who have different backgrounds to the dominant or the majority of the people in a society.
1. they seem to form a big part of their identity with the unusual/foreign/different aspect of their background.
2. they tend to want other people to notice, pay attention and give some kind of importance to that part of their identity.

The combination of these two factors seem to lead these people to notice and be frustrated more than others when something related to their identity is not known to the general public or not taught loudly.

For example, I am half Japanese half Iranian. When I lived in Japan, I used to identify myself more with the Iranian side. I used to notice and get frustrated when attention was not paid to any thing Persian or with a Persian origin. However, from an average Japanese person's point of view for whom Iran is nothing but one country out of so many, whether something comes from Persia or not is such an insignificant issue. This in my opinion, is where the gap between perceptions regarding these issues come from. The gap between perceiving a fact as a mere historical fact just like many others or perceiving it with a passionate importance attached to it resulting in frustration when others don't perceive it with the same importance.

So, in many cases it is possible that the subjectivity or the root of the frustration of ''what is not taught well enough where'' is actually in the person complaining rather than in the blamed society.










Edited by omshanti - 06-May-2008 at 18:23