Right-angled triangles in ancient China
The Zhoubi Suanjing and the Jiu zhang Suanshu, the two earliest sources for the history of mathematics in China, contain numerical examples as well as explicit general rules for the solution of various problems involving right-angled triangles, but in the majority of cases there is no indication of how the given rules (most of which are far from being obvious) were arrived at. In the present paper the authors discuss geometric-diagrammatical proofs of the mathematical propositions lying behind these rules, deduced from the commentaries by Liu Hui and Zhao Junqing in the third century, they also briefly discuss later commentators. The reasoning in Zhao's and Liu's proofs is based on what the well-known topologist Wu Wenjun calls the out-in principle [\textit{Wu Wenjun}; The out-in complementary principle. Ancient China's Technology and Science Foreign Language Press (Peking 1983)]: the addition and subtraction of congruent triangles or other geometrical objects in order to obtain figures of equal area but different shape. The first instance for the application of this principle is the hypothenuse diagram (explaining the relation \(a^ 2+b^ 2=c^ 2\)) described in the Zhoubi Suanjing; it is highly probable that the rules which are not explained in the texts were found by similar considerations.
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