Mathematics emerged a long time ago. People used to pick fruit, dig up vegetables, catch fish, and store it all for the winter. To understand how much food he had stored, he invented an account. This is how mathematics began to emerge.
Then the man began to farm. He had to measure plots of land, build houses, and measure time.
In other words, man needed to use a quantitative indicator of the real world. To determine how much crops were harvested, the size of a building plot or how big a piece of sky with a certain number of bright stars is.
In addition, people began to define shapes: the sun is round, the box is square, the lake is oval, and how these objects are located in space. That is, people began to be interested in the spatial forms of the real world.
Thus, the concept of mathematics can be defined as the science of quantitative relationships and spatial forms of the real world.
Currently, there is not a single profession where one could do without mathematics. The famous German mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss, who was called the “King of Mathematics” once said:
“Mathematics is the queen of the sciences, arithmetic is the queen of mathematics.”
The word “arithmetic” comes from the Greek word “arithmos” – “number”.
Thus, arithmetic is a branch of mathematics that studies numbers and operations on them.
In elementary school, arithmetic is the first thing children learn.
Let’s explore the history of this science.
The period of the birth of mathematics
The main period of accumulation of mathematical knowledge is considered to be the time before the fifth century BC.
Thales
The first person to prove mathematical propositions was the ancient Greek thinker Thales, who lived in the seventh century BC, probably 625-545. This philosopher traveled to the countries of the East. Tradition says that he studied with Egyptian priests and Babylonian Chaldeans.
Thales brought from Egypt to Greece the first concepts of elementary geometry: what is the diameter, how is a triangle defined, and so on. He predicted a solar eclipse and designed engineering structures.
During this period, arithmetic was gradually developed, astronomy and geometry were developed. Algebra and trigonometry were born.
The period of elementary mathematics
This period begins in VI BC. Now mathematics emerges as a science with theories and proofs. The theory of numbers, the doctrine of quantities, and their measurement appear.
EuclidThe most famous mathematician of this time is Euclid. He lived in the third century BC. This man is the author of the first surviving theoretical treatise on mathematics.
In Euclid’s works, the foundations of the so-called Euclidean geometry are given – axioms based on basic concepts such as point, line, plane and their relations.
During the period of elementary mathematics, the theory of numbers, as well as the doctrine of quantities and their measurement, was born. Negative and irrational numbers appear for the first time.
At the end of this period, algebra was created as a lettered calculus. The science of algebra itself appears among the Arabs as the science of solving equations. The word “algebra” in Arabic means “restoration”, i.e. transferring negative values to another part of the equation.
The period of the mathematics of variables
René Descartes The founder of this period is considered to be René Descartes, who lived in the seventeenth century AD. In his works, Descartes first introduced the concept of a variable.
Thanks to this, scientists moved from studying constant quantities to studying the dependencies between variable quantities and to the mathematical description of motion.
Friedrich Engels characterized this period most vividly in his writings:
“The turning point in mathematics was the Cartesian variable. Thanks to this, motion and thus dialectics entered mathematics, and thanks to this, differential and integral calculus, which immediately emerged, and which was generally completed, not invented, by Newton and Leibniz, became immediately necessary.”
All these discoveries and studies are widely used in a variety of fields of science.
And at present, the science of mathematics is developing rapidly, the subject of mathematics is expanding, including new forms and relations, new theorems are being proved, and basic concepts are deepening.