The most learned and accomplished divines, the most distinguished scholars, have diligently studied those branches of knowledge the root and origin of which were the Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and the rest, and have regarded the acquisition from the Greek texts of sciences such as medicine, and branches of mathematics including algebra [1] and arithmetic, as a most valuable achievement. Every one of the eminent divines both studies and teaches the science of logic, although they consider its founder to have been a Sabean. Most of them have insisted that if a scholar has thoroughly mastered a variety of sciences but is not well grounded in logic, his opinions, deductions and conclusions cannot safely be relied upon. [1 If by the word algebra we mean that branch of mathematics by which we learn how to solve the equation x2+5x=14, written in this way, the science begins in the 17th century. If we allow the equation to be written with other and less convenient symbols, it may be considered as beginning at least as early as the 3rd century. If we permit it to be stated in words and solved, for simple cases of positive roots, by the aid of geometric figures, the science was known to Euclid and others of the Alexandrian school as early as 300 B.C. If we permit of more or less scientific guessing in achieving a solution, algebra may be said to have been known nearly 2000 years B.C., and it had probably attracted the attention of the intellectual class much earlier... The name algebrais quite fortuitous. When Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khowarizmi ... wrote in Baghdad (c. 825) he gave to one of his works the name Al-jebr wal-muqabalah. The title is sometimes translated as restoration and equation, but the meaning was not clear even to the later Arab writers. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952, s.v.Algebra.] (Abdul-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization, p. 30)
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 06:34:34 +0000
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