Rhetorical Math to Symbolic Math

Rhetorical Math

Before this period of modern science, all science & math problems & solutions were written out in text, very much like the word problems that we face in school math. Even the solutions were written out in text.

An example can be seen in the “Rhind Mathematical Papyrus”, which was written in ancient Egypt around 1650BCE. This papyrus contains a collection of mathematical problems and solutions, and is a testament to the ingenuity and curiosity of the ancient Egyptians.

At the same time mathematicians, at least in India, encoded math algorithms in beautiful Sanskrit poetry, which was nice to recite and easy to memorise.

What was the reason for this state of affairs?

Symbols were not standardized and could easily be copied wrongly

In those days, manuscripts were copied by hand. Symbols like 2, 3 & + were not standardized yet.

There was a fear that because of repeated copying many symbols would be wrongly copied or become unreadable. Hence symbols were written with their names.

Look at this statement– "Take the temperature in the centigrade scale multiply it nine times and share the result into five equal parts. If you take one such part and add two score and a dozen to it, you will arrive at the reading as per the Fahrenheit scale.”

The students had to read the above text and figure out the relation between the centigrade & Fahrenheit temperature readings. Today we would write the above statement in symbols as “F = 9/5 C + 32”.

And even a student who does not understand science can re-write this as “C = 5/9 (F – 32)” using rules of math.

Imagine a student in the middle-ages trying to write the formula for F in rhetoric math, directly from the formula for C!

This way of writing equations using text was called “rhetorical math”.

The Contribution of the Printing Press

The invention of the printing press dramatically changed the situation.

Books could be printed accurately in thousands of copies and distributed far and wide.

This spread scientific knowledge far & wide among people.

It also led to the standardisation of math symbols.

Emergence of Symbolic Math

So math helped in representing relations & equations in science symbolically, so that understanding, and working with them becomes very easy.

Symbolic representation led to rapid development of both sciences & math.

Math the Tool-Kit of Sciences

Today, you cannot learn any science without using definitions & equations expressed in the language of math.

Math became the tool-kit of sciences.

With such a tool-kit, representing, analysing, questioning & extending ideas in science became easier and sciences developed.

Chemical reactions could be written symbolically and balanced using ideas of math.

Many ideas & explanations in geography - Seasons, eclipses, latitudes & longitudes – are derived from math.