The achievement of the creation of the number 0 and the place order system is no mean feat! As an example, consider the ease with which addition of two numbers is performed using the position system against, say, the Roman system.

It is an error to imagine that this faculty of invention must have resulted in the interest in computing. On that grounds, it is the Chinese who must be most adept at computing for their ancients invented the ABACUS. Of course, the Chinese are better than us at computing, but not only because their ancients invented the ABACUS.

Atanu’s response: There is a distinction between the scientific discoveries as opposed to technological discoveries, though the latter depends on the former. Scientific discoveries are not sufficient for inducing a macro change in society; the benefits of technological innovations can diffuse through society.

Unfortuntately, we are still unable to see our reality of ourselves until the white man tells us. And we immediately believe him without a thought!

Just a comment that attempts to give an insight into the beauty of the invention, and take a little space to lament!

It does not matter if Harappa/Mohanjedaro had wonderful sewage system, if our rural folks are still going to behind bushes with tumbler for toilets. What is the use if we could design such advanced space projects if we could not design a cheap shit pot for our poor ? Let us talk about the current problems. Let us talk about a grander future. And then let us plan a bridge from here to there.

Sorry, I sounded skeptic but I am only alerting to the fact that “I love Atanu’s writings and I want him to write on real problems/solutions”.

Atanu’s response: I agree that it is not helpful to romanticize a mythical golden past. Those who indulge in doing so are laboring under a delusion for psychological reasons. If you read what I wrote, I did not doing that. My point was that some minds in the distant past in the land now called India made an astonishing invention in arithmetic. The extrapolation of that fact into some imagined golden age is not my intention. Any such misreading could be due to the reader’s prejudices.

Thanks for the words of appreciation for my writings. I appreciate them. I also try to highlight real problems and suggest solutions as much as I am able to.

Yet it fills me with profound sorrow to think that so many of the present-day descendents of those brilliant minds are innumerate. They were giants and we are really puny.

I’m not sure I agree with that. Most people have always been innumerate; a good education is a luxury that’s always been available only to a small percent of the population. If anything, the proportion of people without basic mathematical skills has probably decreased over the centuries.

Our education system is a mess, but it’s not accurate to say that it was ever much better.

Atanu’s response: I don’t see where I claimed that our education system is not a mess, or that it used to be much better at an earlier time. So your last statement is a bit of a non sequitur.

Besides, I do agree that a good education is a luxury and like all luxuries, only available to a select but growing few.

For more read “Against the Gods”

Pankaj

Like ‘0′, the Arabs did not invent algebra either. Al Khwarizmi was a reputed Persian mathematician and astronomer. While many Arabs view his contributions as fundamental, many other western scientific historians credit him only with compiling the work of previous mathematicians in his “Al-Mukhtasar fi Hisab Al-Jabr Wa’l-Muqabala” from which the term Algebra was derived. There is no doubt that translation of his book to Latin in the 12th century AD allowed Europe to become familiar with earlier work on the topic. Hence both he and his text became famous.

The Wikipedia entry on Algebra does not credit him with the invention either.

Interestingly:
“Al-Khwarizmi also wrote a treatise on Hindu-Arabic numerals. The Arabic text is lost but a Latin translation, Algoritmi de numero Indorum in English Al-Khwarizmi on the Hindu Art of Reckoning gave rise to the word algorithm deriving from his name in the title”. (From http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Al-Khwarizmi.html)

I have often wondered why Indians are drawn so strongly to the IT industry.

The relative salary is high.

…More seriously however, the ancestral remnants of this early achievement in mathematics also must play some role in the interest in computing.

I’m not sure at all The bulk of IT jobs in india dont even require highschool level math. Its another thing that employers dont feel comfortable with graduates of other degrees. Their are sw engineering jobs which require a lot more knowledge of mathematics but i dont see them done in india. Take a company like mathworks its located in Boston MA thats where bulk of its developers and architects are. It has other offices in europe for some other stuff. But i doubt it that it has anything else but a sales and support team in india.
(last time i checked it did not even have that in india).
The Americans,Germans,Swiss can not say that they invented the indian numerals, but looking at the papers published in mathematics and the number of new algorithms being developed they are not coming in such large numbers from india as they are coming out of US, and europe.
Most indians are interested in computing b/c it can help them earn a living. Its the same globaly.

John Keay, in his book India: A History (page quotes D.R Bhandarkar, the first archaeologist to survey Mohenjo-daro, as saying

According to local tradition, these are the ruins of a town only two hundred years old …This seems not incorrect, because the bricks here found are of the modern type, and there is a total lack of carved terra-cottas amidst the whole ruins.

Keay makes it a point to respond to this quote in his book,

Wrong in every detail, this statement must rank amongst archaeology’s greatest gaffes … In assuming the bricks to be ‘of a modern type’, Bhandarkar was unwittingly paying the Harappan brickmakers a generous compliment.

But like I have posted earlier, it is exteremly unlikely that the ASI, or any other body, will commit enough resources to make such fact more popular. Hell, why don’t we have a ‘Museum of Zero’, surely the story of how Indians invented the zero is as interesting as any other?

Or for that matter, who will research the story behind this ancient wall in Mahabalipuram that I wrote about on my blog? Consider the ignominy this wall suffers when you compare it to the Hadrian Wall.