Friday, August 22, 2008

Which is the best Definition for Mathematics?

  • Mathematics is the body of knowledge centered on such
    concepts as quantity, structure, space, and change, and also the academic discipline that studies them.
  • Benjamin Peirce called it "the science that draws necessary conclusions".
  • Other practitioners of mathematics maintain that mathematics
    is the science of pattern, and that mathematicians seek out
    patterns whether found in numbers, space, science, computers,
    imaginary abstractions, or elsewhere.
  • Mathematicians explore such concepts, aiming to formulate new conjectures and
    establish their truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions.
  • Through the use of abstraction and logical reasoning, mathematics evolved from counting, calculation, measurement and the systematic study of the shapes and motions of
    physical objects. Knowledge and use of basic mathematics have
    always been an inherent and integral part of individual and group life.
  • Refinements of the basic ideas are visible in
    mathematical texts originating in the ancient Egyptian,
    Mesopotamian, Indian, Chinese, Greek and Islamic worlds
    .
    Rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most
    notably in Euclid's Elements.
  • The development continued in fitful bursts until the Renaissance period of the 16th
    century, when mathematical innovations interacted with new
    scientific discoveries, leading to an acceleration in
    research.

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