Circle measurements in ancient China (Q1095126): Difference between revisions

The present paper gives a thorough presentation of the early history of \(\pi\) in China but, now and again, the authors have a tendency to modernize ancient texts. For example: a translation such as ``divide it by 4 to obtain 17037087366'' (p. 377) is certainly not faithful, given that in the Jiuzhang suanshu, numbers are always written out ``in full'', with absolutely nothing corresponding to our modern symbol ``0''; a statement such as ``since the Warring States period, counting rods, manifesting the place value of a decimal system, were used for computation'' would, at least, deserve elements of proof, documentation concerning arithmetical procedures in China many centuries before our era being quasi-inexistant. Lastly, the rendering of the title Zhuishu by ``Method of mathematical composition'' (i.e. The Almagest ?) (p. 329) seems misleading; the authors should have relied there on Shen Gua's explanation of such a difficult term (cf. the jottings nos. 221 and 166 of the Mengqi bitan).