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i didnt know half this stuff —Preceding unsigned comment added by Decora ( talk • contribs) 02:43, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
The religion of Islam does not include math, there is no connection. Mathematicians who were living in regions where Islam was the dominant religion , does not imply that they were Islamic mathematicians . The term makes no sense , but is rather used in some sort of vain attempt at associating the glory of the accomplishments of mathematicians and scientists with the religion of Islam. The fact of studying the Qu'ran makes no impact on one's mathematic ability. The same goes for any other association of a faith with a scientific field. Thus editors who are going around weaving terms like Islamic mathematicians are using Wikipedia as a soap box.-- CltFn 06:07, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
This is a discussion we really need to have. I completely oppose CltFn's arbitrary moves and changes on things he does not need acceptable but this does not make him wrong. What we need to discuss is "is there an Islamic mathematics?" Who uses that phrase? How is it used between different parties? Do Muslims uses it to glorify Islam while secular scholars use it as a term of convenience? If so we cannot conflate those differences as the same. Is attributing these mathematics to the Arabs any different than making it Islamic mathematics? Is it just changing it from a religious pride issue to an ethnic pride issue? What do mathematics historians call this? Personally I don't know what the title of this article will be but I'm pretty sure we'll need to have a section describing the fact that Islamic mathematics is a term in use but so is Arab mathematics. It is not one or the other and the supporters of each term have their biases. Arab nationalists want to glorify the Arabs while "Islamic nationalists" (for lack of a better term) want to use this to glorify Islam. We need to recognize that this is not a straightforward discussion of one is true the other isn't. Both have merit and both are propaganda. We could go for "Mathematics arising from the Middle East" however that is not a term commonly used and would therefore be hard to justify its usage. Let's have a serious discussion and not let this get into reverting before we have done that. gren グレン 18:51, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Ruud / R. Koot, you removed {{accuracy}}. I have re-added it in the sense of making it totally disputed. I am doing this because I think CltFn would make the point that we don't have proof that these mathematicians were Muslim. Therefore what you have would be inaccurate. I don't want to debate this as a fact or whatnot but please do me the favor of not removing this. I will make sure this doesn't digress into a revert war but in order to do that we must address the argument of CltFn which is by no means unfounded. Therefore please do not remove those tags and let us discuss it first. As we come to a decision we can remove the tags. Revert warring will not be tolerated though for anyone here. If you start reverting without involving yourself in the discussion you should probably receive a short block. gren グレン 18:51, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
It seems that the debate involving the {{TotallyDisputed}} tag centers around whether Islam was influential in the development of mathematics. This is silly.
The connection between religion and mathematics is well-known in the history of mathematics. The followers of Pythagoras held the religio-spiritual belief that everything was number. Religious aspects of the theory of number appear in the Theaetetus and the Timaeus of Plato. Even as late as in the 17th century, Leibniz would have said that the invention of calculus was a vehicle for peering into the mind of God.
Even in the early 20th century, Western mathematics has been highly influenced by Western philosophical thought, and philosophical thought does and should include religion. Only after the separation of logic into its own category (apart from mainstream mathematics) in the middle of the 20th century did the connection between Western mathematics and Western philosophy cease entirely.
Now, I am not an expert in medieval mathematics, but I am quite knowledgeable about the philosophy of mathematics. The suggestion that Islamic thought had nothing to do with the development of medieval mathematics seems highly improbable to me, and I believe that the {{TotallyDisputed}} tag should be removed. -- Wzhao553 08:15, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Agree that religion and mathematics are subsets of philosophy, but it is wrong that religion is the mother of mathematics. They may both derive from the same sense of awe and religiosity, but to say that the teachings specific to one form of religion give rise to mathematics is silly. As someone who has studied Islam, knows the language, and is fully familiar with the Hadith and the teachings of the various schools of jurisprudence, I can say that nowhere did I ever see in any of the teachings anything remotely concerned with mathematics. If you can point to something in the haditha or the Quran that might suggest otherwise, it would be a great addition to the article. But I am certain no such connection exists. The only connection is the consanguineity between the spiritual need to understand the world and the expression of that understanding in either mathematical terms or in the folk mythologies of religion. Those who are drawn to one tend also to be drawn to the other, but in no way does learning about angry Abrahamic Gods inspire mathematical revelations.
This idea of "Islamic mathematics" completely ignores and downplays the contributions of pre-Islamic thinkers in India, Babylon, Egypt and other places whose insights were essential for later "Islamic" thinkers to draw their insights. In other words, the people who gave us mathematical insights would have likely done so if the dominant religion were Zoroastrianism or Christianity.
If anything, what Islam provided was not a religion, but a stable government with fixed laws that allowed for trade, economic growth, and division of labor. It was this that allowed a larger number of people to specialize in mathematics and contribute their talents rather than laboring in fields. So if Islam contributed to mathematics, it was only tangentially. KartoumHero ( talk) 19:21, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
I would like to open a discusion about renaming this article to Middle-Eastern mathematics as Mathematics has nothing to do with Islam or Judaism or Buddhism or Christianity or any religion , unless that religion provides mathematical principles and datums that would justify such an association. -- CltFn 02:16, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
The term "Middle-Eastern mathematics" would be incorrect due to several reasons. Islamic mathematicians not only lived in the Middle East, they also lived in Central Asia, North Africa, Spain and India. Mathematics has also been studied in the Middle East since the days of the Egyptians and Babylonians (which already have their own articles), and continued in the days of the Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Syrians, Arabs and Turks. This article refers broadly to the mathematics of the Islamic-dominated cultures, and not just the religion of Islam, in the same way "Greek mathematics" refers braodly to the mathematics of the Hellenistic cultures, and not just the Greek people. Jagged 04:16, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
CltFn re-added the {{ Totally disputed}} tag on 2006 May 15 03:01, with edit summary: the dispute is all over the talk page and was mentioned in my comment when I inserted the tag the first time. But as far as I can see, all issues have satisfactorily been dealt with since. What else is left? CltFn should be more specific, especially in light of the fact that the tag was removed by another editor in good standing. -- Lambiam Talk 08:30, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
This bit seems to have an obvious typo:
since is always 1. I can think of a few things that the author might've meant to write, but I don't know the subject well enough to correct it myself. Staecker 12:00, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Supposedly Al-Batanni (868-929) produced the relationship tanx = sinx/cosx
However, it says later that Abu'l-Wáfa (940-998) invented the tangent function.
I dont see how you could get a relationship for the tangent function before the tangent function was invented. Harley peters 17:04, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Between the two titles "Islamic mathematics" and "Arabic mathematics", the first one is much less misleading. The overwhelming majority of those mathematicians were muslim (at least in name), while only a small minority of them were Arab. I should also remind that the previous move to "Arabic mathematics" (in March 10) wasn't based on any concensus. this page should either move back to "Islamic mathematics" or to "Mathematics in Medieval Muslim World" (which I think is much more accurate). Jahangard 17:57, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Although many able authors have contributed valuable articles, the work as a whole is flawed, to such an extent that one hesitates to recommend it as a general reference on the subject for non-specialists. The flaws are of an editorial nature, and the first is the title chosen for the work. It is no disservice to Arabs (modern or medieval) to point-out that non-Arabs (principally Persians and Turks) also played important roles in the development of medieval Islamic science, and these roles should be acknowledged in the choice of title. "Islamic" is a very serviceable epithet and should have been used, rather than "Arabic," to describe the science being studied. — J. L. Berggren on Roshdi Rashed's Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science. (Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 120, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 2000), pp. 282-283.)
Arabic mathematics → Mathematics in Medieval Muslim World — That's what this page is about. For the detail of the discussion see above. Jahangard 23:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Jahangard has suggested in the above discussion that
It will be clear from my contributions here that I share this view. Can I suggest, however, that it might be more productive to have a discussion by nomination and approval, rather than the more adversarial support/oppose approach? In this procedure, editors can nominate possible titles for this article which other editors can support or comment on. Anyone can nominate as many titles as they like, and everyone can support as many options as they wish, in the spirit of approval voting, although as usual, it would not be helpful to call it a vote. This approach might help to generate and refine solutions to the naming problem which has been occupying editors here for so long. Geometry guy 14:51, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
I had in mind a more interactive approach. Obviously the nominator would discuss the pros (and if they are truly wikipedian, also some of the cons), but further pros and cons could be added by other users. One reason for this approach is that new ideas for titles could be generated during the process. Also, I emphasise, it is rarely a good idea to have a vote in wikipedia: it is the weight of argument, not the weight of numbers that really matters when trying to find consensus. Geometry guy 00:00, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
In the list of mathematicians in this article we should just bring the lead statement of the coresponding main article without any change or discussion. Ibn al-Haytham article indicates that he was born in Basra which is now currently in Iraq but it doesn't say he was Iraqi. If anyone doesn't agree with this please take it to the main article of Ibn al-Haytham first and if there was a consensus about that we will change here accordingly. ( Arash the Archer 00:59, 26 April 2007 (UTC))
I'm going to rewrite the biographies section to be more concise, in chronological order and based on the lists from Hogendijk and MacTutor. — Ruud 06:14, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
This page is supposed to be about Mathematics in Medieval Islamic World, not about modern mathematicians with Muslim background (such as L. A. Zadeh). I removed the section about fuzzy mathematics. Jahāngard ( talk) 22:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
why are we added to the Religion list but not the ethnic group? did not Jews contribute in Islamic Spain? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.72.241.66 ( talk) 10:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
I have unprotected this page, since it was protected nearly a month ago for edit warring. By the way, everyone should sign posts on talk pages with four tildes. I can't easily tell how long the stuff in the previous section has been there, and usually we look over the talk page before unprotecting articles, so the dates help. CMummert · talk 17:28, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm dubious about declaring this clean [1]. RK notes at least one other problem and restores the tag [2]. I think the claim re irrationals was dodgy [3]: what the source actually said was Algebra was a unifying theory which allowed rational numbers, irrational numbers, geometrical magnitudes, etc., to all be treated as "algebraic objects" and this is rather different to Arabic mathematicians were also the first to treat irrational numbers as algebraic objects WMC 21:48, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Note: the article in its pre-stub state is available from Talk:Mathematics in medieval Islam/Jagged 85 William M. Connolley ( talk) 11:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
There is no such thing as Islamic mathematics. What is the point of this article. I don't see how anyone, no matter how politically correct they are, could possibly believe that arithmetic would be different for a Mohammedan than a Christian. 1+1=2 universally. -- FDR ( talk) 17:26, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Pjoef ( talk · contribs) made many changes to this article, and it is very hard to see what was done. I have attempted to summarize the changes to assist discussion, but now that I have done so I do not think the result is very helpful as it is too complex. Nevertheless, here it is. The early part of the following notes should be accurate, but I lost enthusiasm and might have missed some changes in the later edits.
Pjoef made 45 edits on February 14 and 15, 2011. This permalink shows the state of the article after the last of these edits.
Considering successive edits as a single change, seven changes were made:
Taken altogether, the amount of content change was small, yet hard to see due to the massive alterations to spacing and citation style. Johnuniq ( talk) 07:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
{{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |[pages=
ignored (
help) for a concise overview of "several archaic forms of mathematical induction" and conclude that Jagged's claim:is very misleading. This what is so typical and so wrong about Jagged's writing: falsely claiming that X was the first to do Y (strongly implying X did Y in the modern mathematical sense of the word) while being completely devoid of any mathematical content."The first known proof by mathematical induction was introduced in the al-Fakhri written by Al-Karaji around 1000 AD, who used it to prove arithmetic sequences such as the binomial theorem, Pascal's triangle, and the sum formula for integral cubes."
I now investigate the possible relationships between al-Tusi’s definition of D and the derivative. We have f’(m) = [...], but this quantity does not occur in al-Tusi’s argument. This means that al-Tusi does not find m by computing the derivative f’ and by putting f’(x) equal to zero. Therefore the concept of derivative is not implicit here.
Quoting user:Wiqi55 from the above RFC:
Restore, but with verification needed tags (or another special tag) following each sentence. We can then slowly verify each sentence/statement and either re-phrase to better reflect the cited sources or delete if failed verification. I'm suggesting this approach based on my experience in cleaning Jagged edits in a couple of shorter articles (al-Battani and Abu Kamil). In both cases, the Jagged content was useful as a starting point, and better than starting from scratch. And I have to admit that Jagged can be right some times or almost so (i.e., not all his edits are of the same quality). Once this process is done, we can delete sources and claims that can be proven false or unreliable. I would also suggest saving the hard parts for last, like writing a synthesis for mathematical development, after all cleaning/verification is done.
Aquib ( talk) 15:30, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Note: when Wiqi55 said I'm suggesting this approach based on my experience in cleaning Jagged edits in a couple of shorter articles I think some of us thought he meant he had actually used this idea (comes from an editor who has successfully applied the technique. -Aquib (talk) 13:00, 14 March 2011 ). But looking at the article history, and talking to W55, it becomes clear that he hasn't actually used the technique - it is more an idea. It should not be misunderstood as a technique successfully used in practice William M. Connolley ( talk) 21:33, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Further note: that although W55 asserted he had cleaned up Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam, there was still erroneous material left [4] which he has just restored [5]. Sigh William M. Connolley ( talk) 21:35, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
The article should cover a period running not from medieval Islam's start but from medieval Islam's first achievement in Mathematics - for example Al-Khwārizmī's Compendious Book in c820? - or if not then, when? MacStep ( talk) 22:55, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I think we need to settle this without changing the facts on the ground in the process, as they say. I'll just ask and see what they think. - Aquib ( talk) 23:49, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Regarding the naming discussion that took place (apparently) in 2007 ( see above in reference to here), I suggest the first step that be taken to rationalize the handling of the Jagged-affected pages is to standardize the naming convention to conform with similar history-of-x pages on Wikipedia.
etc. These pages should all be renamed and grouped together so that they can be more easily found and reviewed by experts, and the folks currently editing them need to get over their Jagged obsession and start focusing on bringing back sound content from the pages that were deleted en masse per WP:BATHWATER. Apologies to Ruud above, but if folks have been editing these pages since 2006-7 they should clearly be able to distinguish questionablely sourced additions from the same editor from quality sourced additions made by other editors in support of the same material. A wikiproject might be the best way to handle this. Yclept:Berr ( talk) 06:34, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Let us begin with a neutral and innocent definition of Arabic, or what also may be called Islamic, science in terms of time and space: the term Arabic (or Islamic) science the scientific activities of individuals who lived in a region that might extended chronologically from the eighth century A.D. to the beginning of the modern era, and geographically from the Iberian Peninsula and north Africa to the Indus valley and from the Southern Arabia to the Caspian Sea—that is, the region covered for most of that period by what we call Islamic Civilization, and in which the results of the activities referred to were for the most part expressed in the Arabic Language. We need not be concerned over the refinements that obviously need to be introduced over this seemingly neutral definition. — Sabra, A. I. (1996). "Situating Arabic Science: Locality versus Essence". Isis. 87: 654–670.
In the present case, the problems of the proper "historical" approach are further complicated by the difficulties of defining "Islamic" mathematics. One minor dispute is terminological: since "Islam" is primarily a religious term, it seems inappropriate to use it to qualify a science whch had very little to do with religion (especially when a number of its practitioners in the period in question were not Muslims). I prefer "Arabic," although that term too requires many qualifications. But, even when we allow "Islamic" to stand as a shorthand word for a cultural complex, we are still faced with the fact that the mathematics (like all the sciences) of that culture are simply a continuation of the Hellenistic Greek tradition. One of the most remarkable features of Islamic civilization was the way in which it took over and continued, in a different language and mostly in a different geographical area, the scientific heritage of antiquity, which was moribund in the contemporary Byzantine Empire, and in so doing breathed new life into it. There are a number of brilliant achievements in Arabic mathematics, but it has to be viewed as the direct continuation of the Greek tradition (and indeed is unintelligible without that background). Thus making "Islamic mathematics" a separate subject of study is artificial. Berggren, a scholar with a notable record of investigation of previously unstudied medieval mathematical texts, is of course well aware of all this, and of necessity allots some space to laying out the ancient Greek background to the topics he treats. But I should have liked to have seen in the book a more forceful presentation of the essential unity of Greek and Arabic mathematics. — Gerald J. Toomer on J. Lennart Berggren's Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam. (The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 95, No. 6. (Jun. - Jul., 1988), pp. 567-569)
Let us begin with a neutral and innocent definition of Arabic, or what also may be called Islamic, science in terms of time and space: the term Arabic (or Islamic) science the scientific activities of individuals who lived in a region that might extended chronologically from the eighth century A.D. to the beginning of the modern era, and geographically from the Iberian Peninsula and north Africa to the Indus valley and from the Southern Arabia to the Caspian Sea—that is, the region covered for most of that period by what we call Islamic Civilization, and in which the results of the activities referred to were for the most part expressed in the Arabic Language. We need not be concerned over the refinements that obviously need to be introduced over this seemingly neutral definition. — Sabra, A. I. (1996). "Situating Arabic Science: Locality versus Essence". Isis. 87: 654–670.
Although many able authors have contributed valuable articles, the work as a whole is flawed, to such an extent that one hesitates to recommend it as a general reference on the subject for non-specialists. The flaws are of an editorial nature, and the first is the title chosen for the work. It is no disservice to Arabs (modern or medieval) to point-out that non-Arabs (principally Persians and Turks) also played important roles in the development of medieval Islamic science, and these roles should be acknowledged in the choice of title. "Islamic" is a very serviceable epithet and should have been used, rather than "Arabic," to describe the science being studied. — J. Lennart Berggren on Roshdi Rashed's Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science. (Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 120, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 2000), pp. 282-283.)
(Or similar titles such as Arabic and/or Islamic mathematics.)
Am I the only person who finds this discussion surrealistic? Aquib ( talk) 18:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Medieval Islamic mathematics would seem to be a better term, along with (-->) Medieval Islamic science, etc. Then people would actually be able to, y'know, find the page which some folks feel is better left stubbed because they think it takes months to edit to varify or remove sourced claims from an already written article. Good thing they aren't working for a scholarly journal with that attitude! Yclept:Berr ( talk) 06:14, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Out of curiousity... the K pic for the cubic solution: am I right that it is not "constructible" in the traditional sense (because you can't draw parabolas?) so doesn't (in theory) allow geometrical solution William M. Connolley ( talk) 23:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Material unrelated to improving the article
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It seems we cannot get a consensus for action to reverse this stubbing, even under these very unusual circumstances. My next step will be to open an RFC/U on Ruud and WMC for their parts in this incident. Once that is done, I will go back to work trying to bring attention to the bigger problems and mitigate the collateral damage that is resulting, seemingly at an escalating pace, from the Jag RFC/U. While the result itself is disappointing, it is not surprising. In fact, the turnout in support of stubbing was lower than it might have been. It will be interesting to see who else chooses to comment on this particular incident. Thank you all for your time. Aquib ( talk) 13:23, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Appeal to ArbComUpon advice and consideration, I have decided to bypass the RFC/U regarding actions of individuals involved in the stubbing of the Mathematics in medieval Islam article. I will instead prepare an appeal to the Arbitration Committee regarding the need for limits and oversight on the Jagged 85 cleanup. In particular, I remain concerned about these page stubbings, redirects and moves. The question of overzealous or careless cleanup edits may come up as well. As a general approach, I plan to demonstrate the collateral damage occurring as a result of changes in circumstances, and consequently the approach to cleanup, over the period of time since the Jag RFC/U was initiated. Diffs will be presented depicting a variety of unpleasant situations we have encountered, but not for the purpose of singling out individuals for further attention. I, for one, have no appetite for further conflict. I seek a reasonable solution that protects the valid content and the encyclopedia. I have placed a similar post on the Jag RFC talk page. Anyone wishing to discuss anything about these issues that has not already been discussed should direct their comments to that page. |
The Request fr arbitration has been filed - Aquib ( talk) 06:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
There has been some dispute in the Rfc above about the verifiability of the following sourced statement:
which had appeared in the Differential Calculus section of a pre-stubbified version of the article. A slightly different version of this statement was removed from another section of the article on the grounds that it sounded "totally made up" to the editor removing it, even though that editor had apparently not checked the source cited to confirm that his assessment was accurate. Another editor has given two sources which he apparently thinks provide sufficient justification for the statement. However, one of those sources does not at all justify the statement as it is actually worded, and the other is completely worthless—at least for the purposes of citation as a reliable source.
In view of all this I am rather bemused that no-one seems to have bothered checking the source actually cited, which is an article, "Innovation and Tradition in Sharaf al-Dīin al-Ṭusi's al-Mu'ādalāt ", by J. L. Berrgren, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, 110 (1990), pp.304–9. I have now read this source, which is undoubtedly reliable by Wikipedia's standards, and can confirm that the above-quoted text from this Wikipedia article blatantly misrepresents it, in that it states as an undisputed fact something—namely that al-Dīn al-Ṭusi discovered the derivative of a cubic polynomial—which the cited source makes absolutely clear is no more than a conjecture proposed by one expert on al-Dīn al-Ṭusi's work to explain how the latter acquired his knowledge about the maxima of certain cubic polynomials. Moreover, although Berrgren, the author of the cited source, does think that the conjecture is reasonable, he also thinks that another explanation, which doesn't rely on al-Dīn al-Ṭusi's knowing how to compute a derivative, is nevertheless more likely.
The first of the two other sources that have been offered as supposedly supporting the above-quoted statement is page 97 of History of Mathematics: Highways and Byways by Amy Dahan-Dalmèdico and Jeanne Peiffer. The passage which was cited as supposedly supporting the statement was the following:
But the somewhat vague circumlocution, "Sharif Al-Din used expressions corresponding to the first derivative for polynomials", used in this passage, does not at all mean the same thing as, nor does it imply that, Sharif al-Din discovered the derivative of cubic polynomials, Moreover, the text originally omitted from this quotation (as indicated by the ellipses) says:
Precisely what this means is anybody's guess, but having now read Berrgren's article, I would surmise that Dahan-Dalmèdico and Peiffer are here acknowledging the fact—which is stated explicitly by Berrgren—that al-Din did not actually perform the operations of determining an expression for the derivative (at least, not in his known surviving works).
The second source offered as supposedly supporting the disputed statement was
Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt issued by an organisation going by the name of "MobileReference". However, this organisation appears to be in the business of aggregating Wikipedia articles and regurgitating them as e-books for downloading to mobile devices. If you compare
the page cited with the last four paragraphs of the Algebra section of
this version of Wikipedia's article, you will find that they're almost (or perhaps completely—but I haven't checked every single jot and tittle) word for word identical. The source is therefore clearly worthless as a citation to support statements made in Wikipedia.
David Wilson (
talk ·
cont)
14:33, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
For those interested in understanding my position on this question of the claim al-Din discovered the derivative of cubic polynomials. This is an important point from my perspective, and I do not believe my message has yet been clearly communicated.
1. It does not matter whether this claim is true. What is true is I have a reliable source that says Rashed has argued that Sharaf Al-Din discovered the derivative of cubic polynomials and realized its significance for investigating conditions under which cubic equations were solvable. If there is something wrong with this one, just let me know and I will get another. I am not a mathematician, but I can Google lots of books and scholarly works debating this issue. I don't have JSTOR, and the conclusions of my source article may very well be that he didn't. It is not criticial to my position. I have a reliable source that says Rashed argues he did. This is notable. In addition, judging from the amount of material swirling around this topic, it is important. These facts justify its inclusion, and I am confident that given time I can produce many similar sources. According to neutrality policy, this justifies the inclusion of the material in the article, in proportion to the weight it carries in the scholarly community. I have seen no acknowledgement from the other editors that it is even a legitimate scholarly point of view, but it has a lot of scholars talking about it. How can that be?
2. This claim was removed from the article with an edit summary stating that sounds totally made up. It is not totally made up, and its removal without checking its reliability is a violation of neutrality policy. It is a perfect example of why we should not delete cited material without checking it. I do not know how much weight this claim should be given, yet, but it is a significant claim and should not have been removed. The fact this claim sounded totally made up to one editor largely contributed to the article's stubbing.
3. How much of this is going on right now across the affected articles?. This is a blatant example of what can happen when there are no checks or controls in place to curb destructive editing. The normal WP policies and procedures designed to prevent this sort of problem simply do not apply any more. The cleanup is operating outside the normal bounds of our encyclopedia. One mistake like this is bad. 100 are horrifying. A sustained effort to clean up articles with no safeguards in place could eventually tilt the POV of vast sections of the encyclopedia.
I am not here to argue whether the claim is true. To take an a position on the validity of this claim is essentially to synthesize a conclusion based on conflicting, reliable sources. The claim is notable, and therefore deserves inclusion. If we were operating under the normal rules, a simple remedy would be to tweak the statement to make it more generally acceptable or include opposing views. Any other conflicting claim from a reliable source is perfectly welcome.
Aquib ( talk) 05:38, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
(Emphasis mine) Might I instead direct your attention to Wikipedia:Verifiability. — Ruud 15:05, 19 March 2011 (UTC)Well, if this is the case, the deletion process is not the route to take to solve the problems. That's what the talk page is for. Deletion of an article is damaging to Wikipedia and should only be used as a last resort. Content removal can be used to weed out problematic areas. Other adjustments can be made, which may include the addition of information and sources. It may take a lot of work. But it is well worth it!
Heres an attempt at a rewording inspired by the MacTutor treatment
I'd also suggest this goes in section entitles Cubic equations where this and the work Omar Khayyám of could discussed.-- Salix ( talk): 13:23, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Note this type of equation, of course, always has an odd number of (real) solutions, i.e either 1 or 3. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 10:54, 27 April 2014 (UTC).
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
i didnt know half this stuff —Preceding unsigned comment added by Decora ( talk • contribs) 02:43, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
The religion of Islam does not include math, there is no connection. Mathematicians who were living in regions where Islam was the dominant religion , does not imply that they were Islamic mathematicians . The term makes no sense , but is rather used in some sort of vain attempt at associating the glory of the accomplishments of mathematicians and scientists with the religion of Islam. The fact of studying the Qu'ran makes no impact on one's mathematic ability. The same goes for any other association of a faith with a scientific field. Thus editors who are going around weaving terms like Islamic mathematicians are using Wikipedia as a soap box.-- CltFn 06:07, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
This is a discussion we really need to have. I completely oppose CltFn's arbitrary moves and changes on things he does not need acceptable but this does not make him wrong. What we need to discuss is "is there an Islamic mathematics?" Who uses that phrase? How is it used between different parties? Do Muslims uses it to glorify Islam while secular scholars use it as a term of convenience? If so we cannot conflate those differences as the same. Is attributing these mathematics to the Arabs any different than making it Islamic mathematics? Is it just changing it from a religious pride issue to an ethnic pride issue? What do mathematics historians call this? Personally I don't know what the title of this article will be but I'm pretty sure we'll need to have a section describing the fact that Islamic mathematics is a term in use but so is Arab mathematics. It is not one or the other and the supporters of each term have their biases. Arab nationalists want to glorify the Arabs while "Islamic nationalists" (for lack of a better term) want to use this to glorify Islam. We need to recognize that this is not a straightforward discussion of one is true the other isn't. Both have merit and both are propaganda. We could go for "Mathematics arising from the Middle East" however that is not a term commonly used and would therefore be hard to justify its usage. Let's have a serious discussion and not let this get into reverting before we have done that. gren グレン 18:51, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Ruud / R. Koot, you removed {{accuracy}}. I have re-added it in the sense of making it totally disputed. I am doing this because I think CltFn would make the point that we don't have proof that these mathematicians were Muslim. Therefore what you have would be inaccurate. I don't want to debate this as a fact or whatnot but please do me the favor of not removing this. I will make sure this doesn't digress into a revert war but in order to do that we must address the argument of CltFn which is by no means unfounded. Therefore please do not remove those tags and let us discuss it first. As we come to a decision we can remove the tags. Revert warring will not be tolerated though for anyone here. If you start reverting without involving yourself in the discussion you should probably receive a short block. gren グレン 18:51, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
It seems that the debate involving the {{TotallyDisputed}} tag centers around whether Islam was influential in the development of mathematics. This is silly.
The connection between religion and mathematics is well-known in the history of mathematics. The followers of Pythagoras held the religio-spiritual belief that everything was number. Religious aspects of the theory of number appear in the Theaetetus and the Timaeus of Plato. Even as late as in the 17th century, Leibniz would have said that the invention of calculus was a vehicle for peering into the mind of God.
Even in the early 20th century, Western mathematics has been highly influenced by Western philosophical thought, and philosophical thought does and should include religion. Only after the separation of logic into its own category (apart from mainstream mathematics) in the middle of the 20th century did the connection between Western mathematics and Western philosophy cease entirely.
Now, I am not an expert in medieval mathematics, but I am quite knowledgeable about the philosophy of mathematics. The suggestion that Islamic thought had nothing to do with the development of medieval mathematics seems highly improbable to me, and I believe that the {{TotallyDisputed}} tag should be removed. -- Wzhao553 08:15, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Agree that religion and mathematics are subsets of philosophy, but it is wrong that religion is the mother of mathematics. They may both derive from the same sense of awe and religiosity, but to say that the teachings specific to one form of religion give rise to mathematics is silly. As someone who has studied Islam, knows the language, and is fully familiar with the Hadith and the teachings of the various schools of jurisprudence, I can say that nowhere did I ever see in any of the teachings anything remotely concerned with mathematics. If you can point to something in the haditha or the Quran that might suggest otherwise, it would be a great addition to the article. But I am certain no such connection exists. The only connection is the consanguineity between the spiritual need to understand the world and the expression of that understanding in either mathematical terms or in the folk mythologies of religion. Those who are drawn to one tend also to be drawn to the other, but in no way does learning about angry Abrahamic Gods inspire mathematical revelations.
This idea of "Islamic mathematics" completely ignores and downplays the contributions of pre-Islamic thinkers in India, Babylon, Egypt and other places whose insights were essential for later "Islamic" thinkers to draw their insights. In other words, the people who gave us mathematical insights would have likely done so if the dominant religion were Zoroastrianism or Christianity.
If anything, what Islam provided was not a religion, but a stable government with fixed laws that allowed for trade, economic growth, and division of labor. It was this that allowed a larger number of people to specialize in mathematics and contribute their talents rather than laboring in fields. So if Islam contributed to mathematics, it was only tangentially. KartoumHero ( talk) 19:21, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
I would like to open a discusion about renaming this article to Middle-Eastern mathematics as Mathematics has nothing to do with Islam or Judaism or Buddhism or Christianity or any religion , unless that religion provides mathematical principles and datums that would justify such an association. -- CltFn 02:16, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
The term "Middle-Eastern mathematics" would be incorrect due to several reasons. Islamic mathematicians not only lived in the Middle East, they also lived in Central Asia, North Africa, Spain and India. Mathematics has also been studied in the Middle East since the days of the Egyptians and Babylonians (which already have their own articles), and continued in the days of the Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Syrians, Arabs and Turks. This article refers broadly to the mathematics of the Islamic-dominated cultures, and not just the religion of Islam, in the same way "Greek mathematics" refers braodly to the mathematics of the Hellenistic cultures, and not just the Greek people. Jagged 04:16, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
CltFn re-added the {{ Totally disputed}} tag on 2006 May 15 03:01, with edit summary: the dispute is all over the talk page and was mentioned in my comment when I inserted the tag the first time. But as far as I can see, all issues have satisfactorily been dealt with since. What else is left? CltFn should be more specific, especially in light of the fact that the tag was removed by another editor in good standing. -- Lambiam Talk 08:30, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
This bit seems to have an obvious typo:
since is always 1. I can think of a few things that the author might've meant to write, but I don't know the subject well enough to correct it myself. Staecker 12:00, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Supposedly Al-Batanni (868-929) produced the relationship tanx = sinx/cosx
However, it says later that Abu'l-Wáfa (940-998) invented the tangent function.
I dont see how you could get a relationship for the tangent function before the tangent function was invented. Harley peters 17:04, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Between the two titles "Islamic mathematics" and "Arabic mathematics", the first one is much less misleading. The overwhelming majority of those mathematicians were muslim (at least in name), while only a small minority of them were Arab. I should also remind that the previous move to "Arabic mathematics" (in March 10) wasn't based on any concensus. this page should either move back to "Islamic mathematics" or to "Mathematics in Medieval Muslim World" (which I think is much more accurate). Jahangard 17:57, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Although many able authors have contributed valuable articles, the work as a whole is flawed, to such an extent that one hesitates to recommend it as a general reference on the subject for non-specialists. The flaws are of an editorial nature, and the first is the title chosen for the work. It is no disservice to Arabs (modern or medieval) to point-out that non-Arabs (principally Persians and Turks) also played important roles in the development of medieval Islamic science, and these roles should be acknowledged in the choice of title. "Islamic" is a very serviceable epithet and should have been used, rather than "Arabic," to describe the science being studied. — J. L. Berggren on Roshdi Rashed's Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science. (Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 120, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 2000), pp. 282-283.)
Arabic mathematics → Mathematics in Medieval Muslim World — That's what this page is about. For the detail of the discussion see above. Jahangard 23:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Jahangard has suggested in the above discussion that
It will be clear from my contributions here that I share this view. Can I suggest, however, that it might be more productive to have a discussion by nomination and approval, rather than the more adversarial support/oppose approach? In this procedure, editors can nominate possible titles for this article which other editors can support or comment on. Anyone can nominate as many titles as they like, and everyone can support as many options as they wish, in the spirit of approval voting, although as usual, it would not be helpful to call it a vote. This approach might help to generate and refine solutions to the naming problem which has been occupying editors here for so long. Geometry guy 14:51, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
I had in mind a more interactive approach. Obviously the nominator would discuss the pros (and if they are truly wikipedian, also some of the cons), but further pros and cons could be added by other users. One reason for this approach is that new ideas for titles could be generated during the process. Also, I emphasise, it is rarely a good idea to have a vote in wikipedia: it is the weight of argument, not the weight of numbers that really matters when trying to find consensus. Geometry guy 00:00, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
In the list of mathematicians in this article we should just bring the lead statement of the coresponding main article without any change or discussion. Ibn al-Haytham article indicates that he was born in Basra which is now currently in Iraq but it doesn't say he was Iraqi. If anyone doesn't agree with this please take it to the main article of Ibn al-Haytham first and if there was a consensus about that we will change here accordingly. ( Arash the Archer 00:59, 26 April 2007 (UTC))
I'm going to rewrite the biographies section to be more concise, in chronological order and based on the lists from Hogendijk and MacTutor. — Ruud 06:14, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
This page is supposed to be about Mathematics in Medieval Islamic World, not about modern mathematicians with Muslim background (such as L. A. Zadeh). I removed the section about fuzzy mathematics. Jahāngard ( talk) 22:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
why are we added to the Religion list but not the ethnic group? did not Jews contribute in Islamic Spain? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.72.241.66 ( talk) 10:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
I have unprotected this page, since it was protected nearly a month ago for edit warring. By the way, everyone should sign posts on talk pages with four tildes. I can't easily tell how long the stuff in the previous section has been there, and usually we look over the talk page before unprotecting articles, so the dates help. CMummert · talk 17:28, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm dubious about declaring this clean [1]. RK notes at least one other problem and restores the tag [2]. I think the claim re irrationals was dodgy [3]: what the source actually said was Algebra was a unifying theory which allowed rational numbers, irrational numbers, geometrical magnitudes, etc., to all be treated as "algebraic objects" and this is rather different to Arabic mathematicians were also the first to treat irrational numbers as algebraic objects WMC 21:48, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Note: the article in its pre-stub state is available from Talk:Mathematics in medieval Islam/Jagged 85 William M. Connolley ( talk) 11:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
There is no such thing as Islamic mathematics. What is the point of this article. I don't see how anyone, no matter how politically correct they are, could possibly believe that arithmetic would be different for a Mohammedan than a Christian. 1+1=2 universally. -- FDR ( talk) 17:26, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Pjoef ( talk · contribs) made many changes to this article, and it is very hard to see what was done. I have attempted to summarize the changes to assist discussion, but now that I have done so I do not think the result is very helpful as it is too complex. Nevertheless, here it is. The early part of the following notes should be accurate, but I lost enthusiasm and might have missed some changes in the later edits.
Pjoef made 45 edits on February 14 and 15, 2011. This permalink shows the state of the article after the last of these edits.
Considering successive edits as a single change, seven changes were made:
Taken altogether, the amount of content change was small, yet hard to see due to the massive alterations to spacing and citation style. Johnuniq ( talk) 07:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
{{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |[pages=
ignored (
help) for a concise overview of "several archaic forms of mathematical induction" and conclude that Jagged's claim:is very misleading. This what is so typical and so wrong about Jagged's writing: falsely claiming that X was the first to do Y (strongly implying X did Y in the modern mathematical sense of the word) while being completely devoid of any mathematical content."The first known proof by mathematical induction was introduced in the al-Fakhri written by Al-Karaji around 1000 AD, who used it to prove arithmetic sequences such as the binomial theorem, Pascal's triangle, and the sum formula for integral cubes."
I now investigate the possible relationships between al-Tusi’s definition of D and the derivative. We have f’(m) = [...], but this quantity does not occur in al-Tusi’s argument. This means that al-Tusi does not find m by computing the derivative f’ and by putting f’(x) equal to zero. Therefore the concept of derivative is not implicit here.
Quoting user:Wiqi55 from the above RFC:
Restore, but with verification needed tags (or another special tag) following each sentence. We can then slowly verify each sentence/statement and either re-phrase to better reflect the cited sources or delete if failed verification. I'm suggesting this approach based on my experience in cleaning Jagged edits in a couple of shorter articles (al-Battani and Abu Kamil). In both cases, the Jagged content was useful as a starting point, and better than starting from scratch. And I have to admit that Jagged can be right some times or almost so (i.e., not all his edits are of the same quality). Once this process is done, we can delete sources and claims that can be proven false or unreliable. I would also suggest saving the hard parts for last, like writing a synthesis for mathematical development, after all cleaning/verification is done.
Aquib ( talk) 15:30, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Note: when Wiqi55 said I'm suggesting this approach based on my experience in cleaning Jagged edits in a couple of shorter articles I think some of us thought he meant he had actually used this idea (comes from an editor who has successfully applied the technique. -Aquib (talk) 13:00, 14 March 2011 ). But looking at the article history, and talking to W55, it becomes clear that he hasn't actually used the technique - it is more an idea. It should not be misunderstood as a technique successfully used in practice William M. Connolley ( talk) 21:33, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Further note: that although W55 asserted he had cleaned up Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam, there was still erroneous material left [4] which he has just restored [5]. Sigh William M. Connolley ( talk) 21:35, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
The article should cover a period running not from medieval Islam's start but from medieval Islam's first achievement in Mathematics - for example Al-Khwārizmī's Compendious Book in c820? - or if not then, when? MacStep ( talk) 22:55, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I think we need to settle this without changing the facts on the ground in the process, as they say. I'll just ask and see what they think. - Aquib ( talk) 23:49, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Regarding the naming discussion that took place (apparently) in 2007 ( see above in reference to here), I suggest the first step that be taken to rationalize the handling of the Jagged-affected pages is to standardize the naming convention to conform with similar history-of-x pages on Wikipedia.
etc. These pages should all be renamed and grouped together so that they can be more easily found and reviewed by experts, and the folks currently editing them need to get over their Jagged obsession and start focusing on bringing back sound content from the pages that were deleted en masse per WP:BATHWATER. Apologies to Ruud above, but if folks have been editing these pages since 2006-7 they should clearly be able to distinguish questionablely sourced additions from the same editor from quality sourced additions made by other editors in support of the same material. A wikiproject might be the best way to handle this. Yclept:Berr ( talk) 06:34, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Let us begin with a neutral and innocent definition of Arabic, or what also may be called Islamic, science in terms of time and space: the term Arabic (or Islamic) science the scientific activities of individuals who lived in a region that might extended chronologically from the eighth century A.D. to the beginning of the modern era, and geographically from the Iberian Peninsula and north Africa to the Indus valley and from the Southern Arabia to the Caspian Sea—that is, the region covered for most of that period by what we call Islamic Civilization, and in which the results of the activities referred to were for the most part expressed in the Arabic Language. We need not be concerned over the refinements that obviously need to be introduced over this seemingly neutral definition. — Sabra, A. I. (1996). "Situating Arabic Science: Locality versus Essence". Isis. 87: 654–670.
In the present case, the problems of the proper "historical" approach are further complicated by the difficulties of defining "Islamic" mathematics. One minor dispute is terminological: since "Islam" is primarily a religious term, it seems inappropriate to use it to qualify a science whch had very little to do with religion (especially when a number of its practitioners in the period in question were not Muslims). I prefer "Arabic," although that term too requires many qualifications. But, even when we allow "Islamic" to stand as a shorthand word for a cultural complex, we are still faced with the fact that the mathematics (like all the sciences) of that culture are simply a continuation of the Hellenistic Greek tradition. One of the most remarkable features of Islamic civilization was the way in which it took over and continued, in a different language and mostly in a different geographical area, the scientific heritage of antiquity, which was moribund in the contemporary Byzantine Empire, and in so doing breathed new life into it. There are a number of brilliant achievements in Arabic mathematics, but it has to be viewed as the direct continuation of the Greek tradition (and indeed is unintelligible without that background). Thus making "Islamic mathematics" a separate subject of study is artificial. Berggren, a scholar with a notable record of investigation of previously unstudied medieval mathematical texts, is of course well aware of all this, and of necessity allots some space to laying out the ancient Greek background to the topics he treats. But I should have liked to have seen in the book a more forceful presentation of the essential unity of Greek and Arabic mathematics. — Gerald J. Toomer on J. Lennart Berggren's Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam. (The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 95, No. 6. (Jun. - Jul., 1988), pp. 567-569)
Let us begin with a neutral and innocent definition of Arabic, or what also may be called Islamic, science in terms of time and space: the term Arabic (or Islamic) science the scientific activities of individuals who lived in a region that might extended chronologically from the eighth century A.D. to the beginning of the modern era, and geographically from the Iberian Peninsula and north Africa to the Indus valley and from the Southern Arabia to the Caspian Sea—that is, the region covered for most of that period by what we call Islamic Civilization, and in which the results of the activities referred to were for the most part expressed in the Arabic Language. We need not be concerned over the refinements that obviously need to be introduced over this seemingly neutral definition. — Sabra, A. I. (1996). "Situating Arabic Science: Locality versus Essence". Isis. 87: 654–670.
Although many able authors have contributed valuable articles, the work as a whole is flawed, to such an extent that one hesitates to recommend it as a general reference on the subject for non-specialists. The flaws are of an editorial nature, and the first is the title chosen for the work. It is no disservice to Arabs (modern or medieval) to point-out that non-Arabs (principally Persians and Turks) also played important roles in the development of medieval Islamic science, and these roles should be acknowledged in the choice of title. "Islamic" is a very serviceable epithet and should have been used, rather than "Arabic," to describe the science being studied. — J. Lennart Berggren on Roshdi Rashed's Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science. (Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 120, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 2000), pp. 282-283.)
(Or similar titles such as Arabic and/or Islamic mathematics.)
Am I the only person who finds this discussion surrealistic? Aquib ( talk) 18:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Medieval Islamic mathematics would seem to be a better term, along with (-->) Medieval Islamic science, etc. Then people would actually be able to, y'know, find the page which some folks feel is better left stubbed because they think it takes months to edit to varify or remove sourced claims from an already written article. Good thing they aren't working for a scholarly journal with that attitude! Yclept:Berr ( talk) 06:14, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Out of curiousity... the K pic for the cubic solution: am I right that it is not "constructible" in the traditional sense (because you can't draw parabolas?) so doesn't (in theory) allow geometrical solution William M. Connolley ( talk) 23:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Material unrelated to improving the article
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It seems we cannot get a consensus for action to reverse this stubbing, even under these very unusual circumstances. My next step will be to open an RFC/U on Ruud and WMC for their parts in this incident. Once that is done, I will go back to work trying to bring attention to the bigger problems and mitigate the collateral damage that is resulting, seemingly at an escalating pace, from the Jag RFC/U. While the result itself is disappointing, it is not surprising. In fact, the turnout in support of stubbing was lower than it might have been. It will be interesting to see who else chooses to comment on this particular incident. Thank you all for your time. Aquib ( talk) 13:23, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Appeal to ArbComUpon advice and consideration, I have decided to bypass the RFC/U regarding actions of individuals involved in the stubbing of the Mathematics in medieval Islam article. I will instead prepare an appeal to the Arbitration Committee regarding the need for limits and oversight on the Jagged 85 cleanup. In particular, I remain concerned about these page stubbings, redirects and moves. The question of overzealous or careless cleanup edits may come up as well. As a general approach, I plan to demonstrate the collateral damage occurring as a result of changes in circumstances, and consequently the approach to cleanup, over the period of time since the Jag RFC/U was initiated. Diffs will be presented depicting a variety of unpleasant situations we have encountered, but not for the purpose of singling out individuals for further attention. I, for one, have no appetite for further conflict. I seek a reasonable solution that protects the valid content and the encyclopedia. I have placed a similar post on the Jag RFC talk page. Anyone wishing to discuss anything about these issues that has not already been discussed should direct their comments to that page. |
The Request fr arbitration has been filed - Aquib ( talk) 06:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
There has been some dispute in the Rfc above about the verifiability of the following sourced statement:
which had appeared in the Differential Calculus section of a pre-stubbified version of the article. A slightly different version of this statement was removed from another section of the article on the grounds that it sounded "totally made up" to the editor removing it, even though that editor had apparently not checked the source cited to confirm that his assessment was accurate. Another editor has given two sources which he apparently thinks provide sufficient justification for the statement. However, one of those sources does not at all justify the statement as it is actually worded, and the other is completely worthless—at least for the purposes of citation as a reliable source.
In view of all this I am rather bemused that no-one seems to have bothered checking the source actually cited, which is an article, "Innovation and Tradition in Sharaf al-Dīin al-Ṭusi's al-Mu'ādalāt ", by J. L. Berrgren, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, 110 (1990), pp.304–9. I have now read this source, which is undoubtedly reliable by Wikipedia's standards, and can confirm that the above-quoted text from this Wikipedia article blatantly misrepresents it, in that it states as an undisputed fact something—namely that al-Dīn al-Ṭusi discovered the derivative of a cubic polynomial—which the cited source makes absolutely clear is no more than a conjecture proposed by one expert on al-Dīn al-Ṭusi's work to explain how the latter acquired his knowledge about the maxima of certain cubic polynomials. Moreover, although Berrgren, the author of the cited source, does think that the conjecture is reasonable, he also thinks that another explanation, which doesn't rely on al-Dīn al-Ṭusi's knowing how to compute a derivative, is nevertheless more likely.
The first of the two other sources that have been offered as supposedly supporting the above-quoted statement is page 97 of History of Mathematics: Highways and Byways by Amy Dahan-Dalmèdico and Jeanne Peiffer. The passage which was cited as supposedly supporting the statement was the following:
But the somewhat vague circumlocution, "Sharif Al-Din used expressions corresponding to the first derivative for polynomials", used in this passage, does not at all mean the same thing as, nor does it imply that, Sharif al-Din discovered the derivative of cubic polynomials, Moreover, the text originally omitted from this quotation (as indicated by the ellipses) says:
Precisely what this means is anybody's guess, but having now read Berrgren's article, I would surmise that Dahan-Dalmèdico and Peiffer are here acknowledging the fact—which is stated explicitly by Berrgren—that al-Din did not actually perform the operations of determining an expression for the derivative (at least, not in his known surviving works).
The second source offered as supposedly supporting the disputed statement was
Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt issued by an organisation going by the name of "MobileReference". However, this organisation appears to be in the business of aggregating Wikipedia articles and regurgitating them as e-books for downloading to mobile devices. If you compare
the page cited with the last four paragraphs of the Algebra section of
this version of Wikipedia's article, you will find that they're almost (or perhaps completely—but I haven't checked every single jot and tittle) word for word identical. The source is therefore clearly worthless as a citation to support statements made in Wikipedia.
David Wilson (
talk ·
cont)
14:33, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
For those interested in understanding my position on this question of the claim al-Din discovered the derivative of cubic polynomials. This is an important point from my perspective, and I do not believe my message has yet been clearly communicated.
1. It does not matter whether this claim is true. What is true is I have a reliable source that says Rashed has argued that Sharaf Al-Din discovered the derivative of cubic polynomials and realized its significance for investigating conditions under which cubic equations were solvable. If there is something wrong with this one, just let me know and I will get another. I am not a mathematician, but I can Google lots of books and scholarly works debating this issue. I don't have JSTOR, and the conclusions of my source article may very well be that he didn't. It is not criticial to my position. I have a reliable source that says Rashed argues he did. This is notable. In addition, judging from the amount of material swirling around this topic, it is important. These facts justify its inclusion, and I am confident that given time I can produce many similar sources. According to neutrality policy, this justifies the inclusion of the material in the article, in proportion to the weight it carries in the scholarly community. I have seen no acknowledgement from the other editors that it is even a legitimate scholarly point of view, but it has a lot of scholars talking about it. How can that be?
2. This claim was removed from the article with an edit summary stating that sounds totally made up. It is not totally made up, and its removal without checking its reliability is a violation of neutrality policy. It is a perfect example of why we should not delete cited material without checking it. I do not know how much weight this claim should be given, yet, but it is a significant claim and should not have been removed. The fact this claim sounded totally made up to one editor largely contributed to the article's stubbing.
3. How much of this is going on right now across the affected articles?. This is a blatant example of what can happen when there are no checks or controls in place to curb destructive editing. The normal WP policies and procedures designed to prevent this sort of problem simply do not apply any more. The cleanup is operating outside the normal bounds of our encyclopedia. One mistake like this is bad. 100 are horrifying. A sustained effort to clean up articles with no safeguards in place could eventually tilt the POV of vast sections of the encyclopedia.
I am not here to argue whether the claim is true. To take an a position on the validity of this claim is essentially to synthesize a conclusion based on conflicting, reliable sources. The claim is notable, and therefore deserves inclusion. If we were operating under the normal rules, a simple remedy would be to tweak the statement to make it more generally acceptable or include opposing views. Any other conflicting claim from a reliable source is perfectly welcome.
Aquib ( talk) 05:38, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
(Emphasis mine) Might I instead direct your attention to Wikipedia:Verifiability. — Ruud 15:05, 19 March 2011 (UTC)Well, if this is the case, the deletion process is not the route to take to solve the problems. That's what the talk page is for. Deletion of an article is damaging to Wikipedia and should only be used as a last resort. Content removal can be used to weed out problematic areas. Other adjustments can be made, which may include the addition of information and sources. It may take a lot of work. But it is well worth it!
Heres an attempt at a rewording inspired by the MacTutor treatment
I'd also suggest this goes in section entitles Cubic equations where this and the work Omar Khayyám of could discussed.-- Salix ( talk): 13:23, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Note this type of equation, of course, always has an odd number of (real) solutions, i.e either 1 or 3. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 10:54, 27 April 2014 (UTC).