(Article II.7.) How to Educate a KAPO Reflections on the Absence of a Culture of Mathematical Problems in Ur III

Jens Høyrup ()
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Jens Høyrup: Roskilde University, Section for Philosophy and Science Studies

Chapter Chapter 24 in Selected Essays on Pre- and Early Modern Mathematical Practice, 2019, pp 661-688 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The article presents in detail the mathematical terminology of Old Babylonian procedure texts, those for mathematical operations as well as those belonging to the metalanguage needed to formulate problems and structure the prescriptions. In particularly it investigates which terms are properly Sumerian or, if Akkadian, loanwords; which may be written in syllabic Akkadian or by means of logograms (though within a framework of Akkadian syntax), according to the general stylistic ideal of the text; and which as a rule are necessarily expressed in syllabic Akkadian. The general outcome offers strong evidence that the culture of mathematical problems (well presented in the material known from earlier epochs) had been eliminated from the mathematics education of scribes during the Ur-III epoch (21st century BCE), confirming the picture of Ur-III society as extremely oppressive.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-19258-7_24

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