• rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The joke is that calculus as a field of mathematics didn’t exist until millennia after the fall of the empire

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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      3 months ago

      Astrology was so important to the Greeks, they figured out the elliptical orbits of the planets (up to Jupiter) and how to compute them without calculus.

      • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Right, I’m not denying that. People have always been smart. The problem that calculus solved was the intensely difficult algebra that it replaced

        • affiliate@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          ironically, algebraists are currently trying to replace calculus with more algebra. needless to say, the algebra involved is pretty extreme