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Concept
The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art
Summary
The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art is a Chinese mathematics book, composed by several generations of scholars from the 10th–2nd century BCE, its latest stage being from the 2nd century CE. This book is one of the earliest surviving mathematical texts from China, the first being the Suan shu shu (202 BCE – 186 BCE) and Zhoubi Suanjing (compiled throughout the Han until the late 2nd century CE). It lays out an approach to mathematics that centres on finding the most general methods of solving problems, which may be contrasted with the approach common to ancient Greek mathematicians, who tended to deduce propositions from an initial set of axioms.
Entries in the book usually take the form of a statement of a problem, followed by the statement of the solution and an explanation of the procedure that led to the solution. These were commented on by Liu Hui in the 3rd century.
The full title of The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art appears on two bronze standard measures which are dated to 179 CE, but there is speculation that the same book existed beforehand under different titles.
Most scholars believe that Chinese mathematics and the mathematics of the ancient Mediterranean world had developed more or less independently up to the time when The Nine Chapters reached its final form. The method of chapter 7 was not found in Europe until the 13th century, and the method of chapter 8 uses Gaussian elimination before Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855). There is also the mathematical proof given in the treatise for the Pythagorean theorem. The influence of The Nine Chapters greatly assisted the development of ancient mathematics in the regions of Korea and Japan. Its influence on mathematical thought in China persisted until the Qing dynasty era.
Liu Hui wrote a very detailed commentary on this book in 263. He analyses the procedures of The Nine Chapters step by step, in a manner which is clearly designed to give the reader confidence that they are reliable, although he is not concerned to provide formal proofs in the Euclidean manner.
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