this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
682 points (99.4% liked)

Science

12912 readers
40 users here now

Subscribe to see new publications and popular science coverage of current research on your homepage


founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Isn't this common knowledge that the Indians knew the theorem well before Pythagorus?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

@mukt @Zerush A fair number of people worked out the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras existed. For some reason his name stuck for our culture.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Given what other comments are saying about him (cult leader appropriating works of others), I think the west/europe would do well not to associate themselves with him.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes and also I have a hard time believing the builders if the great pyramid didn't understand it in some capacity either. They just didn't have symbolic algebra to express it the way we do .

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

There are mentions of pythagorian triplets in pyramid era Egypt, and in all fairness, ancient Greeks didn't have symbolic algebra either - it is a fairly recent form of expression.

And, as far as I know, ancient Indians were actually writing mathematical expressions in full prose form - word problems et al.