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To: BenLurkin

Whether or not the base 60 system is superior this shows the Greeks did not steal trig from the Babylonians or their system would also be base 60.


34 posted on 08/24/2017 9:45:46 PM PDT by Brooklyn Attitude (Let's start putting signs on Confederate statues that read "DEMOCRAT".)
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To: Brooklyn Attitude

Off the cuff, and by no means authoritative ...

The Babylonians were advanced insofar as they had a “place” system, which gave them great facility in calculation.

The Greeks thought geometrically, and did not emphasize calculation. If you peruse the writings of Apollonius of Perga on the Conic Sections, you will see all the familiar properties of ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas laid out in a completely incomprehensible abstract form.

Thankfully, one may find graphical animations on the internet showing how these abstract relations relate to our familiar analytic descriptions.

Giving all credit to the Babylonians, they did not rise to the level of mathematical sophistication we inherit from the Greeks.


38 posted on 08/24/2017 10:20:50 PM PDT by dr_lew (I)
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