【文章內(nèi)容簡介】
out to be a supremely logical language. to write a word or a phrase or a sentence in arabic is like crafting an equation, because every part is extremely precise and carries a lot of information. thatamp。39。s one of the reasons so much of what weamp。39。ve e to think of as western science and mathematics and engineering was really worked out in the first few centuries of the mon era by the persians and the arabs and the turks. this includes the little system in arabic called aljebra. and aljebr roughly translates to amp。quot。the system for reconciling disparate parts.amp。quot。 aljebr finally came into english as algebra. one example among many. the arabic texts containing this mathematical wisdom finally made their way to europe which is to say spain in the 11th and 12th centuries. and when they arrived there was tremendous interest in translating this wisdom into a european language. but there were problems. one problem is there are some sounds in arabic that just donamp。39。t make it through a european voice box without lots of practice. trust me on that one. also, those very sounds tend not to be represented by the characters that are available in european languages. hereamp。39。s one of the culprits. this is the letter sheen, and it makes the sound we think of as sh amp。quot。sh.amp。quot。 itamp。39。s also the very first letter of the word shalan, which means amp。quot。somethingamp。quot。 just like the the english word amp。quot。somethingamp。quot。 some undefined, unknown thing. now in arabic, we can make this definite by adding the definite article amp。quot。al.amp。quot。 so this is alshalan the unknown thing. and this is a word that appears throughout early mathematics, such as this 10th century derivation of proofs. the problem for the medieval spanish scholars who were tasked with translating this material is that the letter sheen