Why Did the Romans Neglect Mathematics for a Millennium?

  • Thread starter Thread starter oahz
  • Start date Start date
AI Thread Summary
The discussion centers on the perceived lack of mathematical advancement during the Roman Empire, often referred to as "1000 years of mathlessness." Participants debate the effectiveness of Roman numeral systems and their implications for mathematical practice, noting that Roman numerals were cumbersome for calculations. The conversation highlights the contrast between Greek and Roman cultures, with Greeks being credited for significant mathematical theories, particularly in geometry, while Romans excelled in practical engineering and architecture without developing new mathematical theories. The Romans are acknowledged for their remarkable engineering feats, such as aqueducts and concrete structures, but the dialogue suggests they relied heavily on Greek knowledge and mathematicians for more complex calculations. Additionally, the discussion touches upon the cultural differences that influenced the Romans' focus on practical applications rather than theoretical advancements in mathematics and science. Overall, the thread reflects on the complexities of historical knowledge transfer and the varying priorities of ancient civilizations.
oahz
Messages
13
Reaction score
0
1000 years of mathlessness.

what gives?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
oahz said:
1000 years of mathlessness.

what gives?

please explain
 
I suppose if they had to build stuff, like aqueducts, they don't really need maths. Like none whatsoever :rolleyes:
 
wukunlin said:
I suppose if they had to build stuff, like aqueducts, they don't really need maths. Like none whatsoever :rolleyes:

Because theory always precedes practice, right?
 
goingmeta said:
Because theory always precedes practice, right?

and who uses maths in practice?
 
Greg Bernhardt said:
please explain

i know of no math theory attributed to a roman
 
Have you ever tried multiplication with Roman numerals?
 
They probs just used algebra and abicusses.
 
I assume the OP is referring to the fact that the Greeks basically crushed geometry, then got crushed by the Romans, then we have to wait for a whole new religion in Islam to pop up just to figure out what algebra is. I assume it's a combination of the Roman numeral system being just about the worst in the world and the difference in cultures between Greeks and Romans
 
  • #10
Roman contributions to math.

http://accessscience.com/studycenter.aspx?main=17&questionID=5798
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #12
collinsmark said:
Have you ever tried multiplication with Roman numerals?

Try this: (MMDCCXLVII)*(MMCCCXCIV)

They were good at speaking Latin, conquest, building by over-engineering because they couldn't calculate, passing laws, and throwing great parties (not so great if you were a slave)

The Greek math tradition continued at Alexandria during the Roman period.
 
Last edited:
  • #13
wukunlin said:
I didn't know its possible, then I did some googling:
http://www.jimloy.com/arith/roman.htm
http://www.jimloy.com/arith/division.htm

I think I have enough headache for today

And fractions. I'm lead to believe that there wasn't a standard way to represent fractions using the Roman numeral system with more precision that 1/12 (they had some sort of representation for divisions by 12, but I don't know much about that).

I wonder what a fairly precise representation of \pi would look like in the Roman numeral system (something quite a bit more more accurate than III).
 
Last edited:
  • #14
Office_Shredder said:
I assume the OP is referring to the fact that the Greeks basically crushed geometry, then got crushed by the Romans, then we have to wait for a whole new religion in Islam to pop up just to figure out what algebra is. I assume it's a combination of the Roman numeral system being just about the worst in the world and the difference in cultures between Greeks and Romans

My thought, too -- what a terrible numeral system. Notation is powerful!
 
  • #15
The Romans and Greeks had very different notions of leisure, notions that defined a good part of their cultures. The former was dominated by hedonism whereas the latter was focused a good deal on natural philosophy, amongst other things.
 
  • #16
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso
 
  • #17
Haha, classic Python!
 
  • #20
edward said:
The Romans had some unusual units of measurement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_units_of_measurement.

My favorite quote from that page is
The units of weight (in the everyday sense of the word; technically, "mass"

I find it hard to believe that the Romans had a well-defined sense of the difference between mass and weight, and that their units were defined to be in terms of mass, not weight.
 
  • #21
Yet they made incredible concrete and aqueducts that ran for miles across mountainous, uneven terrain, indoor plumbing, incredible systems for hot and cold baths, running toilets. And they were pretty damned remarkable. They created roads that are still in use today. The colosseum had retractable roofs and elevators. A system to flood the bottom to create a sea for indoor water warfare. Their architectural and engineering accomplishments were astonishing.
 
  • #22
One of the prof in my department once said light travels a foot per second. When someone asked how long a foot is (not uncommon here for students who've been taught metric system is the only thing we ever need to know), his reply was "actually, to be precise I meant a Roman foot."
 
  • #23
Evo said:
Yet they made incredible concrete and aqueducts that ran for miles across mountainous, uneven terrain, indoor plumbing, incredible systems for hot and cold baths, running toilets. And they were pretty damned remarkable. They created roads that are still in use today. The colosseum had retractable roofs and elevators. A system to flood the bottom to create a sea for indoor water warfare. Their architectural and engineering accomplishments were astonishing.

I've always wanted to visit Rome to see the remnants of some of the brilliant structures that they've left behind.
 
  • #24
Evo said:
Yet they made incredible concrete and aqueducts that ran for miles across mountainous, uneven terrain, indoor plumbing, incredible systems for hot and cold baths, running toilets. And they were pretty damned remarkable. They created roads that are still in use today. The colosseum had retractable roofs and elevators. A system to flood the bottom to create a sea for indoor water warfare. Their architectural and engineering accomplishments were astonishing.
It's likely that when they needed something engineered they hired or impressed Greek mathematicians. Something I found out recently is that the Roman Army had very few Romans in it. It was mostly made up of foreign troops from conquered countries who were included because of their dedicated strengths; archers from one nation, charioteers from another, etc. The Roman genius seems to have consisted of organizing other people with various specific skills.
 
  • #25
AnTiFreeze3 said:
I've always wanted to visit Rome to see the remnants of some of the brilliant structures that they've left behind.

I too want to visit Rome, and see the original Little Caesar's Pizza store, originally
called "Et tu, Pizza".

I remember how I used to piss-off my Highschool history prof. by talking about Italy when referring to Rome. No matter how many times she told me Italy became a state sometime , I think in the 1800's, ( I wasn't listening much here either) I would keep referring to Italy. I wasn't too good in the area of paying attention.
 
  • #26
zoobyshoe said:
It's likely that when they needed something engineered they hired or impressed Greek mathematicians.
Vitruvius would probably mince you in one of his screwpumps for saying that.
 
  • #27
lisab said:
My thought, too -- what a terrible numeral system. Notation is powerful!

Is the Roman numeral system worse than the Greek numeral system?

greek-table.gif


To write 333, you'd write:

\tau \lambda \gamma

Worse yet, whenever I tried to find a party at a fraternity house, the addresses on the houses weren't even in alphabetic order. They just seemed to number them at random!

The Roman numeral system is actually a great system for thinking about numbers. It's just a lousy system for writing numbers. If a person didn't know the concept of Roman numerals, they wouldn't be able to count all the way up to 99 on their fingers. They couldn't count beyond a measly 9!


zoobyshoe said:
It's likely that when they needed something engineered they hired or impressed Greek mathematicians. Something I found out recently is that the Roman Army had very few Romans in it. It was mostly made up of foreign troops from conquered countries who were included because of their dedicated strengths; archers from one nation, charioteers from another, etc. The Roman genius seems to have consisted of organizing other people with various specific skills.

Just because they didn't invent any new math theories doesn't necessarily mean they didn't learn some of the things the Greeks and Babylonians came up with. I can sympathize with the Romans. I haven't come up with any new math theories at all, but at least I've learned a few of the principles other, smarter people have developed.
 
  • #28
Hey Caligula, where's that LCXVIII bucks you owe me, dude!
 
  • #29
wukunlin said:
One of the prof in my department once said light travels a foot per second. When someone asked how long a foot is (not uncommon here for students who've been taught metric system is the only thing we ever need to know), his reply was "actually, to be precise I meant a Roman foot."

You mean a foot per nanosecond? Otherwise he must have been an engineer...
 
  • #30
dipole said:
You mean a foot per nanosecond? Otherwise he must have been an engineer...

I think you missed the joke.
 
  • #31
Bandersnatch said:
Vitruvius would probably mince you in one of his screwpumps for saying that.
Which he wouldn't be able to do if Archimedes hadn't invented it for him.
BobG said:
Just because they didn't invent any new math theories doesn't necessarily mean they didn't learn some of the things the Greeks and Babylonians came up with. I can sympathize with the Romans. I haven't come up with any new math theories at all, but at least I've learned a few of the principles other, smarter people have developed.
This is probably the case. A look at the wiki article on Vitruvius makes it clear he drew from every previous source he could get his hands on. His book is partly in Greek, which may or may not mean he had a Greek education in mechanics, or it may mean simply mean he spoke Greek and assimilated previously existing Greek works into his own compendium.

It's clear if you've ever read any Caesar that the Romans were very versatile in adapting the technology they knew to the specific situations that arose in specific battles against specific enemies. If they didn't develop any new math it was most likely because they didn't need any new math for their purposes.
 
  • #32
What I was trying to say there, was that it's one thing to state that the Romans hadn't invented anything new in maths, and another to say that they needed Greeks to do the maths for them.
The second proposition is rather too dismissive of the Romans, and that's what I was objecting to.
 
  • #33
Bandersnatch said:
What I was trying to say there, was that it's one thing to state that the Romans hadn't invented anything new in maths, and another to say that they needed Greeks to do the maths for them.
The second proposition is rather too dismissive of the Romans, and that's what I was objecting to.
You're right, and I rescind my terrible, slanderous, mud slinging, and wholeheartedly apologize to any ancient Romans who may have been offended by my callous remarks.
 
  • #34
So can we all agree the Romans were the MBA graduates of the ancient world?
 
  • #35
Physics_UG said:
I think you missed the joke.

Don't worry Dipole, nobody laughed at my joke either.
 
  • #36
dipole said:
You mean a foot per nanosecond? Otherwise he must have been an engineer...

haha yes I do mean nanosecond.
As for engineers, I don't think the ones in my university even knows light has a finite travel time.
 
  • #37
However much praise the Greeks deserve, their belief in the supernatural, i.e., in the gods, is in conflict with reason (which is what they're known for, or believe to stand for), and it ultimately stopped the development of their Mathematics when they would not, could not accept the existence of irrational numbers, because their existence was counter to their beliefs. The Romans did not have these qualms.
And the Greeks not only had some natural geographic defenses to help protect them from invasions; they also had the Spartans to do some of the dirty work. This allowed them to spend more time thinking about philosophy. The Romans had neither, and had to get it together or risk being invaded, and could not so easily afford to lower their guard; they had to be prepared and so had to deal with pressing practical issues to a larger extent than the Greeks.


I remember watching a PBS documentary about the modern city/metropolis in which many majors of large cities mentioned that they were able to successfully address many of their cities' problems by copying what the Romans had done to address the problems of their own cities.

And then there's the legacy of Roman law too.
 
  • #38
Bacle2 said:
And the Greeks not only had some natural geographic defenses to help protect them from invasions; they also had the Spartans to do some of the dirty work. This allowed them to spend more time thinking about philosophy. The Romans had neither, and had to get it together or risk being invaded, and could not so easily afford to lower their guard

I don't buy this argument. Not in the case of empire so safe and rich they could arrange sea battles in the Colosseum.

It is not only mathematics. Have you heard about alchemy/chemistry in the ancient Rome? Physics experiments and discoveries? They had a lot of practical knowledge, but they didn't try to push the science forward. There must have been some cultural reason for that.
 
  • #39
Bacle2 said:
However much praise the Greeks deserve, their belief in the supernatural, i.e., in the gods, is in conflict with reason (which is what they're known for, or believe to stand for), and it ultimately stopped the development of their Mathematics when they would not, could not accept the existence of irrational numbers, because their existence was counter to their beliefs. The Romans did not have these qualms.

This is way overstating the case. Yes, it's true the Pythagoreans keel-hauled one of their own for discovering irrational numbers (at least as far as we are able to tell) but after that things went much more smoothly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_number#History

As you can see in the Greek part they overhauled their way of writing down numbers to move away from "numbers", which were integers and ratios of them, to "magnitudes" which were measurements of geometric objects - in particular could contain irrational numbers. Of course this left them unable to do much algebra since their number system basically became line lengths and angles for the purposes of doing mathematical research, but it's not true that there was a systemic resistance to irrational numbers that halted progress.

Borek, considering how wrong most science was at the time I wouldn't hold it against them to not waste their time with it :p
 
  • #40
Office_Shredder said:
Borek, considering how wrong most science was at the time I wouldn't hold it against them to not waste their time with it :p

But I don't mean pure science. Was inventing distillation beyond their abilities? Was inventing black powder too difficult? Yes, these are sometimes one-time things, but they grow from some kind of entrepreneurship, will to experiment, will to be innovative, looks to me like Romans didn't even try.
 
  • #41
Was inventing black powder difficult? We don't know. It would seem that a society that was intent on conquest/expansion and had spread all over most of the known world (at the time) would like to have gunpowder, and would like to get the formula. If the Chinese had already developed that technology, why not try to get the formula from them?
 
  • #42
It's not like they had no material science. They invented concrete, and I'm sure developed many iterations of better ironworking techniques.

Also turbo, Rome and China had essentially zero contact for Rome's entire history (I don't know if they ever had direct contact, but they certainly had no direct trade relations)
 
  • #43
Office_Shredder said:
/...Also turbo, Rome and China had essentially zero contact for Rome's entire history (I don't know if they ever had direct contact, but they certainly had no direct trade relations)

A Roman delegation did make it to China, where they exchanged various gifts but other than that, the Parthians where pretty good at keeping the two apart. By doing this they made sure that they were the only empire that controlled trade to the west (mega bucks).

The Roman school system did include basic math: counting, multiplication, addition etc. but the main focus was on grammar and rhetoric; that is, if you made it that far and didn't have the thirst for learning beaten out of you by then.
 
  • #44
wukunlin said:
haha yes I do mean nanosecond.
As for engineers, I don't think the ones in my university even knows light has a finite travel time.

I thought the joke was you were implying a roman foot was particularly large...I guess not
 
  • #45
Physics_UG said:
I thought the joke was you were implying a roman foot was particularly large...I guess not

It's about .97ish English feet.

Although I also enjoy interpreting the joke that he's adjusting for that 3% error when he's already off by 9 orders of magnitude
 
  • #46
Office_Shredder said:
It's about .97ish English feet.

Although I also enjoy interpreting the joke that he's adjusting for that 3% error when he's already off by 9 orders of magnitude

lol, yeah
 
  • #47
Office_Shredder said:
It's about .97ish English feet.

Although I also enjoy interpreting the joke that he's adjusting for that 3% error when he's already off by 9 orders of magnitude

I think professor's quote was supposed to be the distance light travels in a nanosecond (rather than a second). That's pretty close to a foot.
 
  • #48
It should be understood that by the second century (101-200 CE) Rome had granted citizenship to many provincials and was a multi-ethnic/multicultural state. Greek was the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean from Hellenistic times and the Hellenistic culture dominated this region throughout the Roman period. Alexandria remained a Greek speaking city and center of learning in the Greek mode including mathematics. Ptolemy of Alexandria created his famous chart of the then known solar system. He managed to develop a system of orbits for the known planets as well as the sun in such a way as to explain the observed motions of the planets with Earth retaining its role at the center of the "universe". It was wrong of course, but it was a difficult and significant geometric exercise.

http://physics.uoregon.edu/~soper/orbits/ptolemy.html
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #49
Office_Shredder said:
This is way overstating the case. Yes, it's true the Pythagoreans keel-hauled one of their own for discovering irrational numbers (at least as far as we are able to tell) but after that things went much more smoothly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_number#History

Right; I was referring more to the general beliefs of some of the pythagoreans and platonists, about other wolds ( the forms, mystical beliefs of some pythagoreans ,etc.)

Borek said:
I don't buy this argument. Not in the case of empire so safe and rich they could arrange sea battles in the Colosseum.

.

I was referring more to the beginning of the empire. But you're right in that once they became richer they did not transition into a more scientific approach.
 

Similar threads

Millennium Tower, San Francisco, leaning more than predicted
Replies
4
Views
868
Julian and Roman calendar names and month names & number
Replies
4
Views
629
Who was Sponsian? Roman Emperor?
Replies
5
Views
2K
Why Did Pythagoras Have a Phobia of Beans?
Replies
7
Views
2K
Did Michio Kaku Agree with Max Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis?
Replies
3
Views
1K
Is mathematics invented or discovered?
Replies
2
Views
115
The problem with Mathematics in Physics
2
Replies
99
Views
7K
Prove that terms cyclic in ##a,b,c##, are in ##\text{AP}##
Replies
7
Views
2K
Exploring Mental Blocks in Mathematics: A Personal Perspective
Replies
5
Views
2K
What type of mathematics did you find the most difficult?
Replies
6
Views
3K

Hot Threads

Recent Insights

Back
Top