How is history related to maths?

Answer 1

There is an area of study called history of mathematics.

Mathematics has a history of over 4000 years, and a lot of what we study today has its roots in the distant past.

History can help us to understand how mathematics got to be the way it is today. There are two very broad factors influencing the development of mathematics.

One is practical problems that need to be solved. Arithmetic evolved to meet the needs of trade. The earliest geometry is supposed to have come about because of problems in measuring land. In later times, the development of cannons required the development of ballistics, and also of new types of fortification to resist the new weapons. Many times in history, the most powerful country in economic and military power has also been the leading country in mathematics.

The other factor is developments internal to mathematics. A famous example is the discovery that the side of a square and the length of its diagonal cannot be expressed as the ratio of whole numbers (in more modern language, that the square root of 2 is irrational). This was a purely theoretical discovery with no practical consequences. But it undermined the geometry of the time of the Pythagoreans, which was based on whole number ratios. It led mathematicians to create a new theory that can be found in Euclid's Elements, and that theory eventually contributed to our modern understanding of real numbers.

Answer 2

There is an area of study called history of mathematics.

Mathematics has a history of over 4000 years, and a lot of what we study today has its roots in the distant past.

History can help us to understand how mathematics got to be the way it is today. There are two very broad factors influencing the development of mathematics.

One is practical problems that need to be solved. Arithmetic evolved to meet the needs of trade. The earliest geometry is supposed to have come about because of problems in measuring land. In later times, the development of cannons required the development of ballistics, and also of new types of fortification to resist the new weapons. Many times in history, the most powerful country in economic and military power has also been the leading country in mathematics.

The other factor is developments internal to mathematics. A famous example is the discovery that the side of a square and the length of its diagonal cannot be expressed as the ratio of whole numbers (in more modern language, that the square root of 2 is irrational). This was a purely theoretical discovery with no practical consequences. But it undermined the geometry of the time of the Pythagoreans, which was based on whole number ratios. It led mathematicians to create a new theory that can be found in Euclid's Elements, and that theory eventually contributed to our modern understanding of real numbers.