Reading the classics:

Introduction, history of math

and logic
Farinaz Koushanfar
Rice ECE Dept.
Feb 18, 2008

Summary

| Course objectives
| Class census

| History of ancient mathematics

| History of logic

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What is the class about?

z Reading the seminal papers in electrical

engineering, those who have introduced a new
concept and resulted in a paradigm shift
z To increase knowledge and awareness about
the history of our field, we will also shortly
discuss the biography of the author inventor
and how they have had impact
z Inspired by a course at Berkeley thought by
Prof. Papadimitriou (’04) -- emphasis on logic
z A few others, including Stanford and Princeton
started offering similar courses recently

More objectives

z To motivate and inspire the

participants to take research
leadership positions
z To have fun learning basic papers that
always wished for, but never had time
z If you have seen some of the papers
before, that is even better. You can
present it to others who see it for the
first time!

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Logistics
| Title: “Reading the classics”
| Organizer
z Farinaz Koushanfar, Rice University
| Meeting time
z 4:00AM - 5:20PM M
| Meeting place
z 1049 - DH
| Prerequisites
z Interest and passion in your field of
study/research, and curiosity to learn

Class consensus

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Sample classic papers
| Ronald Fisher Maximum Likelihood Framework, 1924
| Wiener Filter, 1940
| As We May Think. Vannevar Bush, 1945
| First Draft of the Report on EDVAC. John von
Neumann, 1946
| A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Claude E.
Shannon, 1948
| The Turing Test paper, Alan Turing, 1950

Sample classic papers

(cont’d)
| Kalman Filter, 1960
| Gordon Moore’s Paper (Moore’s Law), 1965
| Cooley-Tukey FFT Algorithm, 1965 and paper by
Heideman, Johnson and Burrus on Gauss and History
of FFT
| Parks-McClellan FIR Filter Design, 1972
| Kleinrock and Tobagi Packet Switching in Radio
Channels: Part I and II, 1975
| De-Noising By Soft-Thresholding, David Donoho, 1994

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 Prehistory of math…
Number
symbols
in Egypt
Egyptian
Babylonian
calendar
Decimal
Early
numbers
geometric
in Egypt
shapes

Palaeolithic -- central
Europe/France record
numbers on bones
30,000 25,000 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000
Year (B.C.)

Prehistory of math (cont’d)…

Babylonians:
Quadratic/linear
Equations, MUL No-zero
Tables, roots decimal
number
system in
China
Babylonian
used numbers
in finance Golenischev
papyrus
Hieroglyphic written
numerals in
Egypt Babylonians
solve
Abacus
quadratic
in Middle
equations
East
3,000 2,000 1,500 1,000
Year (B.C.)

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 Prehistory of math (cont’d)…
Pythagoras
of Samos
Moves to Italy

Apastamba Thales brings

Sulbasutras Babylonian
Math to Greece,
Manava’s And solves many
Sulbasutras important problems
Baudhayana
Brahmagupta
writes Indian
Invented zero!
Sulbasutras

1,000 750 500

Year (B.C.)

Prehistory
•Eudemus of Rhodes
of math (cont’d)…
writes geometry history
•Autolycus of Pitane Archemides:
•Aristaeus the Sphere &
•Eudoxus of Cnidus the Cylinder
Archytas of Tarentum Liu Hsin uses
decimal fractions

Plato founds
his academy
in Athens
Zeno of Elea
Eratosthenes Hipparchus:
presents his paradoxes Euclid writes
the Elements sieve method the precession
Babylonian for finding all of the equinoxes
sexagesimal prime numbers.
numbers predict
planet positions

500 250 0
Year (B.C.)

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Development of logic
| Logic was implicit, but explicit movements started by
Greeks generally ascribed to Thales (640 - 546 B.C.)
| Stoic logic traced its roots back to Euclid of Megara, a
pupil of Socrates
| Stoic concentrates on propositional logic and is close
to modern thinking
| Aristotle's collection of works Organon, started
Peripatetic tradition
| Aristotelian uniquely codified logic for centuries, the
change only came in 19th century

Logic in India
| Two Hindu schools of thought deal with logic: Nyaya
and Vaisheshika
| Nyaya was realist, developed a rigid five-member
schema of inference
z initial premise, a reason, an example, an application
and a conclusion
| The idealist Buddhist philosophy: the chief opponent to
the Naiyayikas
z A contradictory doctrine known as "apoha" or
differentiation was developed
z Neo-scholastic school of Navya-Nyāya (16th century)
z Developed a formal analysis of inference

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 Logic in China

| Mozi, "Master Mo", is credited with

founding the Mohist school
| Dealt with issues of valid inference and
the conditions of correct conclusions
| A modern Mohist school, Logicians,
are credited by some scholars for their
early investigation of formal logic
| The trend died until the introduction of
Indian philosophy by Buddhists

Logic in Islamic philosophy

| Logic of “Kalam” since mohammad
| Skewed by Mu'tazili philosophers, who valued Aristotle’s
Organon
| Scientists including Al-Farabi, Avicenna, al-Ghazali
Farabi opposed Aristotle
| These shaped the medieval European logic
| Islamic logic studied formal patterns and inference, in
particular w.r.t language
| “Avicennian logic” introduced hypothetical syllogism,
temporal modal logic, and inductive logic
| Seriously down in 12th century, stopped at 15th

Avicenna

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 Logic in medieval Europe

| Based on Aristotelian logic developed about

1200-1600 C
| Latin translations of the 12th century, when
Arabic texts on Aristotelian logic and
Avicennian logic were translated
Ockham | Early logicians influenced by Avicenna
| Aristotelian became dominant later
| Book writing become a tradition
| William of Ockham (a.k.a De Morgan's
Laws) and Jean Buridan (paradoxes)

Buridan

Traditional logic in Europe

| Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole's

Logic, Port-Royal Logic (1662)
Nicole
| Loosely Cartesian doctrine, that the
proposition is a combining of ideas
rather than terms
Arnauld | Watts' Logick: Or, the Right Use of
Reason (1725), Whately's Logic (1826),
and Mill's A System of Logic (1843)

Mills

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 Advent of modern logic
| Descartes, is the first to have had the idea of using
algebra for reasoning
| Leibniz was the first to formulate the notion of a broadly
Descartes applicable system of mathematical logic (late 17th
century)
| Boole invented his algebra, which is the basis of all
modern computer arithmetic (mid 18th century)
| Frege extended logic beyond propositional, to include
Leibniz “all”, “some”,... (1879)
| Peirce-Schröder, introduced the term "second-order
logic“ (1885)
| Peano - logical axiomatization of arithmetic (1889)

Boole

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