Blog Response 3

 The first thing in the article that surprised me was the existence of intellectual debt. I have always thought of debt as something physical that one party owed to another. It is difficult for me to grasp that intelligence was used like currency, because information today is widely public and free.

The next thing that surprised me was how countries interacted with each other in terms of scientific exchange. India and China connected through Chinese Buddhist pilgrimages into India, bringing with them their own findings. Egypt and Greece connected through knowledge sharing from the Egyptians, which led to the intellectual debt stated before. I found interest in knowing that information was shared in many different ways. 

The last thing that surprised me was how the Maya developed their mathematics compared to the rest of the world, despite being cut off from the rest of the world. Their calculations involved basic mathematical tools, but their results rivalled Europe's precision. I find math exciting for many reasons, one being that there are often many different ways to solve a problem and arriving to the same solution, which the Mayans did with their limitations.


Comments

  1. Amanda FritzlanSeptember 21, 2022 at 11:04 AM

    David, I agree with you that the exchange of knowledge between ancient civilizations is fascinating. Power relationships and belief systems are an important part of how mathematics developed. During the Islamic Golden Age, mathematics developed to calculate geographical locations in relation to Mecca. I hope that you can bring the multiple ways developed throughout history to solve the same problems into your classroom one day.

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