古代数学证明的历史传统.pdf

h e History of Mathematical Proof in Ancient Traditions h is radical, profoundly scholarly book explores the purposes and nature of proof in a range of historical settings. It overturns the view that the i rst mathematical proofs were in Greek geometry and rested on the logical insights of Aristotle by showing how much of that view is an artefact of nineteenth-century historical scholarship. It documents the existence of proofs in ancient mathematical writ- ings about numbers, and shows that practitioners of mathematics in Mesopotamian, Chinese and Indian cultures knew how to prove the correctness of algorithms, which are much more prominent outside the limited range of surviving classical Greek texts that historians have taken as the paradigm of ancient mathematics. It opens the way to providing the i rst comprehensive, textually based history of proof. Jeremy Gray, Professor of the History of Mathematics, Open University 鈥楨ach of the papers in this volume, starting with the amazing 鈥淧rologue鈥 by the editor, Karine Chemla, contributes to nothing less than a revolution in the way we need to think about both the sub- stance and the historiography of ancient non-Western mathematics, as well as a reconception of the problems that need to be addressed if we are to get beyond myth-eaten ideas of 鈥渦nique Western rationality鈥 and 鈥渢he Greek miracle鈥? I found reading this volume a thrilling intel- lectual adventure. It deserves a very wide audience.鈥 Hilary Putnam, Cogan University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University karine cheml a is Senior Researcher at the CNRS (Research Unit SPHERE, University Paris Diderot, France), and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. She is also Professor on a Guest Chair