Something don’t seem right.

    by girlpower2025

    28 Comments

    1. I believe codified modern calculus is a better way to look at it. From my admittedly limited knowledge I am under the impression that it was a practical understanding ex. Construction worker vs academic understanding before their articulation.

    2. Oddly things can be invented more than once.

      For instance, although one place didn’t really use it, the wheel was invented in 2 distinct places of the world (at least), and there are at least 3 independent ‘inventions’ of writing (Fertile Crescent/Cuneiform, China/Oracle Bone writing, and Mesoamerican scripts – the last have the least clear provenance).

    3. You forgot about the Chinese. Anyway, best described by Wikipedia … “Many elements of calculus appeared in ancient Greece, then in China and the Middle East, and still later again in medieval Europe and in India. Infinitesimal calculus was developed in the late 17th century by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz independently of each other. An argument over priority led to the Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy which continued until the death of Leibniz in 1716.”

    4. FaxMachineInTheWild on

      I made a triangle out of clay when I was 7, I didn’t independently invent trigonometry.

    5. Early use of some elements of calculus and the infinitesimal calculus developed by Newton and Leibniz are very, very different things.

    6. Those two people invented modern calculus. There is a massive difference. What the Egyptians and Indians used are precursors to modern calculus.

    7. Our modern day notion of calculus is effectivly the study of limits and infinitesimals, notions introduced by Newton and Liebniz. Surely some results had been explored before throughout the world, but the modern study of calculus started with Newton and Liebniz.

      To be clear, there are tonnes of cases like this in math history, but this ain’t one.

    8. This is stupid. this is like saying Albert Einstein “invented” time and space. Or man”invented” fire. There is nothing new under the sun, we just learn how to harness these concepts and utilize them to their values highest potential.

    9. AnachronisticPenguin on

      There are no ancient structures that require calculus to build.

      Calculus is about change and buildings are about static loads.

      Unless you’re doing stress strain stuff with earthquakes or the wind what are you talking about requiring calculus?

    10. This is like saying cave men used elements of the printing press when they were imprinting their hands covered in animal blood on the cave wall.

    11. MikolashOfAngren on

      So OP, are you suggesting that the invention of calculus by Newton & Leibniz was unoriginal and… *derivative*? 😈

    12. Ancient structures did not require calculus, only simple arythmetics and geometry. Calculus is a much more concrete and complex field of mathematics. I am not sure about Aryabhata, never heard about him, but I doubt he was inquiring into the calculation of infinities, differentials and integrals in the 6th century AD.

    13. Columbus did discover America though, right? Sure there were people already living in the “New” World, but non-white people don’t count.

    14. Queasy-Group-2558 on

      Ancient structures didn’t really require calculus though. Not sure about aryabhata or if they were using calculus.

    15. samurai_for_hire on

      You don’t need to be an engineer or even understand calculus to understand that limestone can support an insane amount of its own weight

    16. Pyramids required calculus? Why? Any use I can think of would be equally well served by a scale model

    17. I have now started to believe that we do not discover anything, we rediscover it, just the ways are different

    18. LadenifferJadaniston on

      Was this before or after Newton invented gravity?
      If it was before, it explains how they could build the pyramids so easily

    19. Complex-Pace-1807 on

      The Egyptians did not in fact use calculus to build the pyramids, it’s completely unnecessary.

    20. PositronicGigawatts on

      The fuck is this horseshit? Might as well throw in UFOs and the Illuminati while you’re at it.

      Trigonometry is not calculus.

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