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Open Letter to President Barack Obama (fair history of civilization)
Posted:
Jul 12, 2009 4:05 AM
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Dear Mr. President Barack Obama,
a prospering global society requires a fair history of
civilization, including a fair history of mathematics.
Mathematics may be called the logic of building and
maintaining. The earliest mathematics I found so far
is the ingenious lunisolar calendar from Lebombo,
Central Equatorial Africa, 35,000 years old. Another
big leap in the development of mathematics occured
again on the African continent, in ancient Egypt,
where I found a whole mathematical cosmos below
the level of Greek mathematics, based on addition,
including number columns for the approximation of the
square roots of 2 and 3 and 5 and the cube root of 2,
additive number sequences that generate good values
of irrational numbers such as pi from a bad and a
mediocre one, and excellent values from a mediocre
and a good one, and even a systematic method for the
calculation of the circle based on the Sacred Triangle
3-4-5, two thousand years before Archmides ... The
math-history-list is a forum where these insights could
be published, not right from the begin but in recent
years. Now this forum is being closed down. I believe
that such a forum - a new one if the old one can't
be saved - is important in writing a new and fair
history of mathematics, as part of a fair history
of civilization that will encourage good people
all over the world to join our common effort in
solving the global problems we are facing today.
Sincerely, Franz Gnaedinger, Zurich
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