The post that was quoted here has been removedI can't find the book I have of his games, it's in one of my boxes (I hope) which are on top of each other hampering a systematic search. I think it's:
The Best Games of Mir Sultan Khan: An Indian Mystic Challenges the West (Hardinge Simpole chess classics) R.N. Cole
I had a look at Amazon and the cover picture was ringing bells. Above you said:
When Westerners write biographically about Indians, there's the Orientalist tendency to emphasize the exotic or sensational.That book title does tend to support this.
2 edits
Duchess64 wrote:
"Are there culturally different ways of doing mathematics in the modern world?
I don't know of significant differences.
Mathematics involves collaboration across national and cultural lines."
Not any more, but historically mathematically, the Arabs won and the Romans lost! I think all the Romans have left in that department are faces on fancy watches, movie sequels, and the Superbowl! 😉
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Not any more, but historically mathematically, the Arabs won and the Romans lost! I think all the Romans have left in that department are faces on fancy watches, movie sequels, and the Superbowl! 😉Well, hardly surprising the Romans lost
Do you fancy doing arithmetic in numerals? 19 x 9 becomes XIX x IX!
Talk us through that to CLXXI (171)
@paul-leggett saidDone, Paul!
Hi all,
I am posting this because the issue is important to me- I feel it is a grave injustice for this not to have happened already.
Here is the link from Chessbase.com to sign the petition:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/help-to-make-sultan-khan-a-grandmaster
For those who are not familiar with Mir Sultan Khan, here is his Wikipedia entry link:
https://en ...[text shortened]... ed to sign the petition, and to pass this information along to their chess playing friends. Thanks!
🙂
@blood-on-the-tracks saidXIX * IX = (XX-I)*(X-I) = XX*X -XX - X +I = CC-XXX+I = CLXX+I = CLXXI
Well, hardly surprising the Romans lost
Do you fancy doing arithmetic in numerals? 19 x 9 becomes XIX x IX!
Talk us through that to CLXXI (171)
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@paul-leggett said0 is overrated, but...
I was just being humorous, although the difference also included ideas. For instance, what is the Roman numeral for 0? The Romans did not have that idea, but the Arabs did.
The great idea was not a numeral for zero. If the Romans wanted to write zero, they could just write nullus (and AFAIK did). No, the true revolutionary idea, which nobody, not even the ever-perfect Chinese, thought of before the Indians did, is the positional system.
Zero is all very well. Recognising that zero can be a number and not just the absence of a number is clever, but not, in practice, anything meaningful. What's important is realising that zero tens, and zero milliards, are as important as both zero ones and four milliands. It's that, and not merely the dreaming up of a symbol for zero, which makes the Indian number system superior. After all, even the Mayans, Chinese, and (millennia earlier) the Egyptians had a symbol for zero itself.
@shallow-blue saidThanks for this. Apparently, in any culture or language or mathematical schema, the concept of zero represents my knowledge of the subject quite nicely!
0 is overrated, but...
The great idea was not a numeral for zero. If the Romans wanted to write zero, they could just write nullus (and AFAIK did). No, the true revolutionary idea, which nobody, not even the ever-perfect Chinese, thought of before the Indians did, is the positional system.
Zero is all very well. Recognising that zero can be a number and not ju ...[text shortened]... r all, even the Mayans, Chinese, and (millennia earlier) the Egyptians had a symbol for zero itself.