Why Algorithms Are Called Algorithms, and How It All Goes Back to the Medieval Persian Mathematician Muhammad al-Khwarizmi

In recent decades, a medieval Per­sian word has come to promi­nence in Eng­lish and oth­er major world lan­guages. Many of use it on a dai­ly basis, often while regard­ing the con­cept to which it refers as essen­tial­ly mys­te­ri­ous. The word is algo­rithm, whose roots go back to the ninth cen­tu­ry in mod­ern-day Greater Iran. There lived a poly­math by the name of Muham­mad ibn Musa al-Khwariz­mi, whom we now remem­ber for his achieve­ments in geog­ra­phy, astron­o­my, and math­e­mat­ics. In that last field, he was the first to define the prin­ci­ples of “reduc­ing” and “bal­anc­ing” equa­tions, a sub­ject all of us came to know in school as alge­bra (a name itself descend­ed from the Ara­bic al-jabr, or “com­ple­tion”).

Today, a good few of us have come to resent algo­rithms even more than alge­bra. This is per­haps because algo­rithms are most pop­u­lar­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the deep, unseen work­ings of the inter­net, a sys­tem with ever increas­ing influ­ence over the things we do, the infor­ma­tion we receive, and even the peo­ple with whom we asso­ciate.

Pro­vid­ed suf­fi­cient data about us and the lives we lead, so we’re giv­en to under­stand, these algo­rithms can make bet­ter deci­sions for us than we can make for our­selves. But what exact­ly are they? You can get one answer from “Why Algo­rithms Are Called Algo­rithms,” the BBC Ideas video at the top of the post.

For West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, al-Khwarizmi’s most impor­tant book was Con­cern­ing the Hin­du Art of Reck­on­ing, which was trans­lat­ed into Latin three cen­turies after its com­po­si­tion. Al-Khwarizmi’s Latinized name “Algo­rit­mi” gave rise to the word algo­ris­mus, which at first referred to the dec­i­mal num­ber sys­tem and much lat­er came to mean “a set of step-by-step rules for solv­ing a prob­lem.” It was Enig­ma code­break­er Alan Tur­ing who “worked out how, in the­o­ry, a machine could fol­low algo­rith­mic instruc­tions and solve com­plex math­e­mat­ics. This was the birth of the com­put­er age.” Now, much fur­ther into the com­put­er age, algo­rithms “are help­ing us to get from A to B, dri­ving inter­net search­es, mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions of things for us to buy, watch, or share.”

The algo­rithm giveth, but the algo­rithm also taketh away — or so it some­times feels as we make our way deep­er into the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. In the oth­er BBC Ideas video just above, Jon Stroud makes an inves­ti­ga­tion into both the nature and the cur­rent uses of this math­e­mat­i­cal con­cept. The essen­tial job of an algo­rithm, as the experts explain to him, is that of pro­cess­ing data, these days often in large quan­ti­ties and of var­i­ous kinds, and increas­ing­ly with the aid of sophis­ti­cat­ed machine-learn­ing process­es. In mak­ing or influ­enc­ing choic­es humans would once have han­dled them­selves, algo­rithms do present a risk of “de-skilling” as we come to rely on their ser­vices. We all occa­sion­al­ly feel grat­i­tude for the bless­ings those ser­vices send our way, just as we all occa­sion­al­ly blame them for our dis­sat­is­fac­tions — mak­ing the algo­rithm, in oth­er words, into a thor­ough­ly mod­ern deity.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Algo­rithms for Big Data: A Free Course from Har­vard

Advanced Algo­rithms: A Free Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

This Is Your Kids’ Brains on Inter­net Algo­rithms: A Chill­ing Case Study Shows What’s Wrong with the Inter­net Today

The Prob­lem with Face­book: “It’s Keep­ing Things From You”

The Com­plex Geom­e­try of Islam­ic Art & Design: A Short Intro­duc­tion

How Youtube’s Algo­rithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japan­ese Song Into an Enor­mous­ly Pop­u­lar Hit: Dis­cov­er Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


by | Permalink | Comments (32) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (32)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • WokeLib says:

    Seri­ous­ly?!! The man wrote a book cred­it­ing Hin­du schol­ars IN THE TITLE, and you decide he “invent­ed” it? This is cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion at its most brazen. Al-Khwariz­mi was a glo­ri­fied trans­la­tor, and com­piled knowl­edge from India on math­e­mat­ics, astrol­o­gy et al. There is no such thing as “Hin­du Ara­bic” numer­als. It’s Indi­an numer­als which are still in use to date in India over a thou­sand years. Just because the West “dis­cov­ered” knowl­edge thru mid­dle-east­ern traders doesn’t make the lat­ter the source. Iron­i­cal­ly, the colo­nial­ists (espe­cial­ly Por­tuguese and Brits) did a door-to-door cam­paign in India find­ing and destroy­ing mil­lions of ancient man­u­scripts because edu­cat­ed and sci­en­tif­ic mind­ed Hindu’s would not con­vert unless they were tor­tured or made igno­ra­mus­es. Job well done.

  • TurkicScholar says:

    There is no need to be enraged. As you said, Al-Khwariz­mi com­piled the pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of Hin­du, also Hel­lenis­tic, Hebrew, and Greek trea­tis­es, with the knowl­edge from Ara­bic and Per­sian stud­ies, by adding his own orig­i­nal find­ings. Such is the sci­en­tif­ic way of pro­gres­sion, as euro­pean sci­en­tists also improved upon these stud­ies. You say it like he just trans­lat­ed a par­tic­u­lar book and that was all. While this is not true, we also have to accept that our cur­rent sci­en­tif­ic progress was achieved with a lot of cul­tures con­tribut­ing to it. Also, thanks for the great arti­cle!

  • Jonathan J Crabtree says:

    OK, let’s check the offi­cial algo­rithm for mul­ti­pli­ca­tion, which, accord­ing to dic­tio­nar­ies, is AB equals A added to itself B times.* Yet that would mean one mul­ti­plied by one equals two! Algo­rithms with­out com­mon sense are use­less!

    Jonathan J Crab­tree
    Ele­men­tary Math­e­mat­ics His­to­ri­an
    Mel­bourne Aus­tralia
    http://www.podometic.in
    http://www.jonathancrabtree.com
    @jcrabtree

    * E.g. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/multiplication

  • Moodiji says:

    Yes Indi­an cul­ture is num­ber 1. Thats why every­one wants to escape to Chris­t­ian coun­tries. The clean­li­ness, the atti­tude towards woman and cow wor­ship are to be admired. I am Indi­an and the only thing I find good about Indi­an cul­ture are the fam­i­ly val­ues and South Indi­an non-veg food. You sanghs will man­u­fac­ture all sorts of sto­ries about how India was the best and all the proof was destroyed by some­one else. Very con­ve­nient isn’t it.

  • Boring Geek says:

    Tur­kic­Schol­ar 💯. Total­ly agree !! Bril­liant­ly put !! Love­ly write up & love­ly arti­cle too . !!

  • Super_aesthete says:

    The title of the arti­cle and the title of Al-Khwarizmi’s book are diver­gent.
    It is also quite illog­i­cal to attribute the dis­cov­ery of alge­bra to him espe­cial­ly as he him­self has doc­u­ment­ed his source.
    The Fibon­naci series is anoth­er exam­ple of mis­at­tri­bu­tion. Fibonac­ci has doc­u­ment­ed the series as hav­ing been writ­ten by Indi­an math­e­mati­cians.
    We are all wel­come to our illu­sions. But doc­u­ment­ed fact should be con­sid­ered.

  • ganesh says:

    Well said. West­ern his­to­ri­ans kept on lying /discredited con­tri­bu­tion from Indi­ans. In the his­to­ry time­line, when peo­ple in the west were Nomads, Indi­an built super struc­tures which are still stand­ing today as a tes­ti­mo­ny to rich cul­tur­al ‚sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. Request the west­ern his­to­ri­ans to open their eyes from Now on before utter­ing /peddling non­sense here!!!

  • Tulika Saha says:

    I am so glad that at least some­one is bold enough to point it out. This has often been the basis of dis­cus­sion (the destruc­tion of Hin­du learn­ing and mak­ing them believe that they know noth­ing) in our house­hold but I have nev­er seen it on a pub­lic plat­form. Thanks for putting it out there!

  • Prad says:

    Utter­ly dis­ap­point­ed. Appar­ent­ly, author has not done any research before pub­lish­ing this crap.

  • subrata says:

    You might have gone through mul­ti­ple orgasm after post­ing this? No won­der who­ev­er feels proud about Indi­an cul­ture are all sanghis … you are per­haps the one of those mil­lions who lick the roads in USA and come back and tell us how good it feels to do that! Well done .… we don’t need you here! Next time you step into this Coun­try, we will fix your renam­ing grey mat­ter so that you can call your­self ” am white but I look lit­tle burnt”

  • ba_doh says:

    Guys … this is a post from BBC.
    Why are you all get­ting so worked up with it.

    If one went by BBC, India is a poor hin­ter­land of crooks who look to Britain for moral lessons. Hehe­he­he. It is a com­e­dy chan­nel and Indi­ans should do well to avoid watch­ing this and help­ing them make mon­ey due to the big­ger view­er­ship that we offer.

    There is no point flam­ing on the inter­net with peo­ple who like the BBC (they are already brain­washed by this fake news, one sided biased chan­nel). Just give it a pass. Get out of this ques­tion and get out of any­thing to do with BBC. You may think you are prov­ing a point to oth­er name­less face­less inter­net neti­zens … in real­i­ty you are giv­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty to this vac­u­ous poster who quotes from the biggest media liar BBC.They make mon­ey due to this pop­u­lar­i­ty. Deny them that !!!

  • Dio Brando says:

    Cringe to see Hin­du nation­al­ists rag­ing again about anoth­er sil­ly thing.

    The numer­al sys­tem is called ara­bic-hin­du numer­al because schol­ars have always iden­ti­fied the impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions from both cul­tures. The core numer­al sys­tem were sourced from the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent which got it’s way into the per­sian-ara­bic trade. They learnt it’s more ver­sa­tile than alter­na­tives such as the Roman numer­als. The per­sians and arabs such as Khwariz­mi then improved and refined it for more com­plex usage and spread this knowl­edge to the rest of the world. Their works are fur­ther refined and improved by sub­se­quent cul­tures that even­tu­al­ly laid the foun­da­tion of mod­ern sci­ence.

    Today’s Hin­dus are the most unsci­en­tif­ic group of peo­ple in the plan­et, believ­ing in all sorts of insane con­spir­a­cies and prac­tices. There is a weird deep root­ed infe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex in their cul­ture in the last decade (at least that’s when I noticed). It’s those who dis­tance them­selves away from their reli­gious super­sti­tions, and mere­ly use reli­gion as inspi­ra­tion for sci­ence that con­tribute to the world.

    Sci­ence is a time­less art of give and take of knowl­edge. The genius Arab and Indi­an schol­ars of medieval times have more in com­mon with each oth­er and mod­ern sci­en­tists across the world than present day use­less reli­gious nation­al­ists.

  • Truth seeker says:

    What to say a lot. But i am tired of such low life con­tent cre­ators to waste my breath on them any­more.
    ALge­bra and trigonom­e­try and many more sci­en­tif­ic advance­ments where done by the hin­dus of India. Peri­od.

  • BELLA says:

    I don’t know why some peo­ple is act­ing and putting there point here every­body knows about the his­to­ry and respect it as well ‚so its a good thing if peo­ple are writ­ing is down for y’all, Al-Khwariz­mi broth­er you done real­ly nice work , keep it up .

  • Sanghi says:

    left­ist pig spot­ted!

  • Egalitarian says:

    Does it real­ly mat­ter who came up with it? They were, just like the rest of us, human. Right? Nation­al­ism is a can­cer­ous out­growth from trib­al­ism. Per­haps this was nec­es­sary at one point for our sur­vival, after all coop­er­a­tion is usu­al­ly a good thing, but as soon as we cre­ate bor­ders and ter­ri­to­ries to fight over we all lose. The inter­net makes the world small­er and small­er every day, so per­haps now would be a good time to con­sign this pathet­ic bick­er­ing to our past and take the acheive­ments of these great peo­ple and actu­al­ly make them mean some­thing, so that in anoth­er thou­sand years from now we can cel­e­brate their achieve­ments as a species that did­n’t wipe itself out with its own stu­pid­i­ty.

  • ibrahim says:

    you nev­er gave any evi­dence to sup­port this. You said AlKhawariz­mi not­ed his source but you nev­er pro­vid­ed it and then gave an irrel­e­vant exam­ple.

    pro­vide some proof insead of waf­fle and doubt.

    Doc­u­ment­ed facts should be con­sid­ered please pro­vide some

  • Ex-Mathematician says:

    Jonathan, I think you will find that the def­i­n­i­tion of the algo­rithm for mul­ti­pli­ca­tion (AB) that you sup­plied there is incor­rect. But maybe you knew that?
    Try adding A to itself (B‑1) times (since A is already present in the result once).
    Com­mon sense (and knowl­edge) applied.

    I’ve writ­ten an algo­rithm or two in the past, but now large­ly resist the temp­ta­tion to.
    And they weren’t use­less, or I would­n’t have both­ered.

  • Lizard says:

    Wait until you find out that air and water are both Halal.
    Your big­otry will be off the charts.

  • Lizard says:

    Big­ot.

  • Steve Douglas says:

    Yes. The def­i­n­i­tion of mul­ti­pli­ca­tion in that dic­tio­nary is def­i­nite­ly wrong — which is pret­ty poor. As some­one else point­ed out, a bet­ter ver­sion is to add A to itself (b‑1) times, which still works only for pos­i­tive non-zero mul­ti­pli­ers, since you can’t add A to itself a neg­a­tive num­ber of times to mul­ti­ply by less than one.

    What it real­ly means is: If B is neg­a­tive then invert the sign of both A and B. Then start with zero and add A to it B times.

    This is the sort of thing you have to do when you need to work on tiny micro­proces­sors that have no mul­ti­ply instruc­tion — which are rare these days but do exist. There are of course, opti­mised ways of doing it which are faster, but that does at least work.

    Design­ing algo­rithms is rarely as straigh­for­ward as peo­ple believe, espe­cial­ly if you want them to work under all con­di­tions.

  • Upananda Brahmachari. says:

    Algo­rithm has its def­i­nite Indi­an root. It can’t be denied any­way. In short, Indi­an Math­e­mat­ics is pre­dom­i­nant­ly algo­rith­mic. In fact, the very word “Algo­rithm” is derived from the name of Al Khwariz­mi (c. 9th Cen­tu­ry) whose works played a cru­cial role in the trans­mis­sion of Indi­an algo­rith­mic pro­ce­dures to the Islam­ic and lat­er to the West­ern world. We shall dis­cuss a few select­ed algo­rithms that are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Indi­an math­e­mat­i­cal tra­di­tion from the ancient Śul­basūtrās to the medieval texts of the Ker­ala School. In par­tic­u­lar, we shall out­line some of the con­struc­tions described in the Śul­basūtrās, the algo­rithm for com­put­ing the cube-root giv­en by Āryab­haṭa (c.499) and the kuṭṭa­ka and cakraväla algo­rithms for solv­ing lin­ear and qua­drat­ic inde­ter­mi­nate equa­tions as dis­cussed by Āryab­haṭa (c.499), Brah­magup­ta (c.628), Jayade­va (pri­or to the 11th cen­tu­ry) and Bhāskara (c.1150). We shall also dis­cuss the effi­cient algo­rithms for accu­rate com­pu­ta­tion of Π and the sine func­tion due to Mād­ha­va (c.14th cen­tu­ry) as dis­cussed in the texts of the Ker­ala School of Math­e­mat­ics and Astron­o­my.

  • Sutapas Bhattacharya says:

    Yes, you are cor­rect. Hen­ry Cole­brooke showed way back in 1817 that al Khwariz­mi, who trans­lat­ed the Indi­an Arith­metic (Cam­bridge prof. John Bar­row describes the Indi­an Place Val­ue Dec­i­mal Num­ber Sys­tem as the great­est ever human inven­tion) also trans­lat­ed Indi­an Astro­nom­i­cal texts which uti­lized the Ancient Indi­an Alge­bra known as Bija­gani­ta. Cole­brooke showed how the Indi­an Alge­bra was far more advanced than any­thing the Greeks [who made lit­tle advance on Baby­lon­ian alge­bra until the late work of Dio­phan­tus] had man­aged. Greek math­emtics was char­ac­ter­ized by sta­t­ic Geom­e­try. Chris­t­ian Yates has an arti­cle in The Con­ver­sa­tion online enti­tled Five Ways Ancient India Changed the World with Maths. Mod­ern Arith­metic, Alge­bra, Trigonom­e­try and even Cal­cu­lus — which laid the true foun­da­tions for the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion [as Charles Seife shows in Zero] were all derived from Ancient Indi­an math­e­mat­ics.

  • Unknown says:

    This arti­cle is fac­tu­al­ly incor­rect and shows the sys­temic bias of euro­cen­tric goons to avoid giv­ing any cred­it to India. Algo­rithms, dec­i­mal num­ber sys­tems, Alge­bra (includ­ing solv­ing qua­drat­ic equa­tions), trig­nom­e­try and series approx­i­ma­tions and even the con­cept of infin­i­ty were all invent­ed by Indi­an (Hin­du) math­e­mate­cians. Al-khwariz­mi was just a trans­la­tor.

  • national gallery says:

    You live and learn. I had thought the word algo­rithm arose as a suit­able gen­er­al term for the process that was com­mon to com­put­er pro­gram­ming. In so far as the lat­ter is a means of pro­duc­ing an accel­er­at­ed solu­tion, it bore an obvi­ous rela­tion to the ear­li­er use of the log­a­rithm which had enabled an increased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in cal­cu­la­tion. And it was prob­a­bly con­sid­ered to addi­tion­al­ly suit­ably allude to the orig­i­na­tion of the elec­tron­ic com­put­er.

  • Sutapas Bhattacharya says:

    Such false Euro­cen­tric pre­sen­ta­tions are com­mon in His­to­ry and Phi­los­o­phy of Sci­ence linked to so-called West­ern ‘Clas­sics’. Ancient Greek shamans and mys­tics such as Pythago­ras, Par­menides, Empe­do­cles and Her­a­cli­tus are pre­sent­ed as ‘sci­en­tists’ where­as Ori­en­tal philoso­phers are reduced to mys­ti­cal poets! Although there were excep­tionas such as Cole­brooke, this was linked to the British colo­nial loot­ing of India. Max Muller wrote that, were he a Ger­man, Cole­brooke would be cel­e­brat­ed through­out Ger­man acad­e­mia but in Eng­land, not one word!
    It was James Mill {Father of John Stu­art Mill], who start­ed try­ing to decon­t­a­m­i­nate Pla­to of Mys­ti­cal [sup­pos­ed­ly ‘Ori­en­tal’] ‘con­t­a­m­i­na­tion — when in fact Pla­to’s Philosophia was a Yoga-like prac­tice for attain­ing Enlight­en­ment (Sophia was the Cos­mic Light of Wis­dom). Mill who nev­er vis­it­ed India, claimed in his so-called ‘His­to­ry’ that it was a Land of Eter­nal Pover­ty and Famine. He blamed this mis­ery on Hinduism/Brahmanism which sup­pos­ed­ly had remained unchenged for 3,000 yrs. This was to cov­er up the Crimes Against Human­i­ty of his col­leagues in the E India Com­pa­ny — who start­ed the British impe­r­i­al loot­ing of US$45 Tril­lion from India [along with its dein­dus­tri­al­iza­tion and pau­per­iza­tion — see Jason Hick­el’s arti­cle on Al Jazeera online — which also shows how the British lie about this] and the killing of tens of mil­lions by export­ing Indi­a’s food­grains for British Food Secu­ri­ty and prof­it. Mill rose to No2 in the EIC. This includ­ed the cre­ation of Death Camps for vic­tims of the 1877 Madras Famine which gave less star­va­tion rations than Buchen­wald for hard labour, killing 94% of inmates.
    In real­i­ty, in 1616 Eng­lish Ambas­sador Thomas Roe described Del­hi as the Trea­sury of the world and Mughal India had over 25% of glob­al GDP. In 1877 Cor­nelius Wal­ford showed that there were 30 famines in just 120 yrs in British-occu­pied India com­pared to just 17 famines in the whole of India in the pre­vi­ous 2,000 years.This was because native rulers act­ed to pre­vent and alle­vi­ate famines where­as the British cre­at­ed them with their pseu­do-Free Mar­ket Social Dar­win­ism [even deny­ing char­i­ta­ble aid for the vic­tims], export­ing food and let­ting the poor die as also in Ire­land. Thomas Malthus worked at Haile­bury the EIC Col­lege. George Orwell wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier that 100 mil­lion Indi­ans must be forced to the edge of star­va­tion so that the British can live as they do.
    This myth about al-Khwariz­mi sup­pos­ed­ly invent­ing what was actu­al­ly Indi­an maths was recent­ly ped­dled on a BBC online mag­a­zine and I point­ed it out but they keep deflect­ing by say­ing that his work was nonethe­less impor­tant — which is side­step­ping the real issue. When it comes to oth­er forms of so-called ‘cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion the Liberal/Leftist BBC would be run­ning around in rings apol­o­giz­ing to Mus­lims and African-ori­gin peo­ple. I have noticed the insid­i­ous influ­ence of Anglo-Iraqi Sur­rey Physics pro­fes­sor and TV pre­sen­ter Jim al-Khalili in per­pet­u­at­ing such Islam­ic mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of Indi­an achieve­ments. In his TV doc­u­men­taries he claimed the Indi­an Num­ber sys­tem and Zero as Islam’s great­est con­tri­bu­tions to Sci­ence. An Islam­ic exhi­bi­tion at the Lon­don Sci­ence Muse­um also claimed the Zero as orig­i­nat­ing in Islam­ic cul­ture. There is an Ara­bic pro­pa­gan­da film star­ring Ben Kings­ley called 1001 Inven­tions which makes numer­ous such false claims based on absurd argu­ments as debunked on YT videos.

  • Sutapas Bhattacharya says:

    Nation­al Gallery — No — the Eng­lish word Algo­rithm was used in the Mid­dle Ages by Chaucer etc. and orig­i­nal­ly referred to the Indi­an Dec­i­mal Place Val­ue Num­ber Sys­tem which al Khwariz­mi trans­lat­ed into Ara­bic — and was lat­er trans­lat­ed from Ara­bic into Latin by Leonar­do of Pisa (Fibonac­ci).
    As I have stat­ed in an ear­li­er com­ment, Greek Maths was char­ac­ter­ized by sta­t­ic Geom­e­try [as with their sta­t­ic view of the uni­verse]. Con­verse­ly, as anoth­er com­menter states, Indi­an Maths was char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Alge­bra­ic or Algo­rith­mic — and Indi­an cos­mol­o­gy had a dynam­ic Process view of every­thing as con­stant­ly chang­ing flux [sam­sara — with­out cease].! This is also the case with Chi­nese maths though it should be not­ed that, as famous Chi­nese schol­ar Lin Yutang wrote in The Wis­dom of India and Chi­na, India was Chi­na’s teacher in so many things such as Phi­los­o­phy, Gram­mar, Qua­drat­ic Equa­tions, Trigonom­e­try etc…

  • Shailesh Parekh says:

    Why do you refer to any Indi­an who stands up for their culture/civilization as hin­du nation­al­ist? The fact is that the home of math­e­mat­ics is in India. The arabs learnt it from us and export­ed it to the west. Many of us feel that the great con­tri­bu­tions made to the fun­da­men­tals of human advance­ment by the Indi­an civ­i­liza­tion are not duly rec­og­nized and for that mat­ter appro­pri­at­ed. I do not feel any sense of infe­ri­or­i­ty about my cul­ture.
    The BBC has always had a thing against hin­dus sim­ply because we dont inden­ti­fy our­selves as vic­tims and we are suc­cess­ful for­ward look­ing peo­ple. Like most left wing enti­ties they are the first to apol­o­gise for mus­lims (any­one who plays vic­tim) and this is an attempt by them to present islam as pro­gress­sive con­trib­u­tor to human­i­ty, which unfor­tu­nate­ly is not true. They make many such pro­grams.
    They had noth­ing to say about the bru­tal­i­ty met­ed out to the kash­miri hin­dus, but will ped­dle the nar­ra­tive of intol­er­ance by hin­dus on mus­lims in India.

    https://youtu.be/kN2rvquYBbQ
    Have a look at this clip. Hon­est Arab peo­ple are able to admit this.

  • Amit Shukla says:

    Algo­rithms were used and nar­rat­ed by Āryab­haṭa (c.499) and Brah­magup­ta (c.628) in India in the math­e­mat­i­cal trea­tis­es. And are nar­rat­ed in the Śul­basūtrās

    Long before the birth of Al Khwariz­mi (c. 9th Cen­tu­ry)

    It is a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion to label the per­son who trans­mits ancient Indi­an or ancient Chi­nese knowl­edge to Europe, as the inven­tor. Like say­ing Colum­bus dis­cov­ered Amer­i­ca : all the native Amer­i­cans and Mayans are ciphers, only the white man is the deter­mi­nant of “dis­cov­ery” ?

    The world nei­ther began nor ends in Europe.

  • Felipe says:

    I don’t see this as “com­mon sense”. It’s pure log­ic:

    If it is mul­ti­pli­ca­tion, then the algo­rithm is as shown. (if-then)

    The only way that this can be (log­i­cal­ly) wrong is a case where it is, in fact, a mul­ti­pli­ca­tion AND the algo­rithm is not as pre­sent­ed. You arrived 1 * 1, but 1 * x is NOT a mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of x, so it can­not be used to test the verac­i­ty of the claim.

    Just as you can­not add zero dol­lars to your account, you can­not mul­ti­ply amounts by one.

    Of course, you can DEFINE a mul­ti­pli­ca­tion by 1, to add “orthog­o­nal­i­ty”:

    A * B equals:
    B, if A equals 1
    A added to itself B times, oth­er­wise.

    (Note that this is still incom­plete, for NUMERIC SETS)

    Just as you can­not get the num­ber set def­i­n­i­tion of an oper­a­tion from the dic­tio­nary, you can­not judge a dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion of a word by its use in num­ber sets. They are dif­fer­ent things and this has noth­ing to do with com­mon sense. At least in my opin­ion.

  • Deepak says:

    This is again LIE and destruc­tion of History…if you study vedas and you know san­skrit, you will find indi­ans had wrote lit­er­a­ture on every field of sci­ence and life.There are many which we have even today in 21st cen­tu­ry have not start­ed explor­ing like spir­i­tu­al sci­ence. Ancient Indi­an had mas­tered it. Even the per­son who invent­ed nuclear weapon in cto­days worls said that he relied on indi­an lit­er­a­ture for it. Ancient indi­ans were mas­ter in all sec­tors like Space, sci­ence, med­ical, ayurved, yog, yoga, life, relife etc but lost due to inva­sions …

  • Dovydas says:

    I dont real­ly see how do you come to that con­clu­sion. Why one mul­ti­plied by one equal two? A added to itself B times — lets check. A = 1 , B = 1. So A(1) added B(1) times — which is sim­ply one A — its 1. Where you get 2?

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.