The History of Mathematical Proof in Ancient Traditions

Karine Chemla is Senior Researcher at the CNRS (Research Unit SPHERE, France) and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. She is also Professor on a Guest Chair at Northwestern University, Xi'an, as well as at Shanghai Jiaotong University and Hebei Normal University, China. She was awarded a 'Chinese Academy of Sciences Visiting Professorship for Senior Foreign Scientists' in 2009.

Prologue: historiography and history of mathematical proof: a research program Karine Chemla; Part I. Views on the Historiography of Mathematical Proof: 1. The Euclidean ideal of proof in The Elements and philological uncertainties of Heiberg's edition of the text Bernard Vitrac; 2. Diagrams and arguments in ancient Greek mathematics: lessons drawn from comparisons of the manuscript diagrams with those in modern critical editions Ken Saito and Nathan Sidoli; 3. The texture of Archimedes' arguments: through Heiberg's veil Reviel Netz; 4. John Philoponus and the conformity of mathematical proofs to Aristotelian demonstrations Orna Harari; 5. Contextualising Playfair and Colebrooke on proof and demonstration in the Indian mathematical tradition (1780–1820) Dhruv Raina; 6. Overlooking mathematical justifications in the Sanskrit tradition: the nuanced case of G. F. Thibaut Agathe Keller; 7. The logical Greek versus the imaginative Oriental: on the historiography of 'non-Western' mathematics during the period 1820–1920 François Charette; Part II. History of Mathematical Proof in Ancient Traditions: The Other Evidence: 8. The pluralism of Greek 'mathematics' Geoffrey Lloyd; 9. Generalizing about polygonal numbers in ancient Greek mathematics Ian Mueller; 10. Reasoning and symbolism in Diophantus: preliminary observations Reviel Netz; 11. Mathematical justification as non-conceptualized practice: the Babylonian example Jens Høyrup; 12. Interpretation of reverse algorithms in several Mesopotamian texts Christine Proust; 13. Reading proofs in Chinese commentaries: algebraic proofs in an algorithmic context Karine Chemla; 14. Dispelling mathematical doubts: assessing mathematical correctness of algorithms in Bhaskara's commentary on the mathematical chapter of the Aryabhatıya Agathe Keller; 15. Argumentation for state examinations: demonstration in traditional Chinese and Vietnamese mathematics Alexei Volkov; 16. A formal system of the Gougu method - a study on Li Rui's detailed outline of mathematical procedures for the right-angled triangle Tian Miao.