User:KatherineDRogers

I served in the army as a physician. I was injured so spend a great deal of time reading. I developed an interest in the history of mathematics and science. What could someone know...with no special equipment or funds? We all don't have a personal electron microscope and Hadron Collider. Still what could we know as individuals without all that? The early Greeks for example knew a great deal about Geometry and Astronomy with no special equipment. This leaves us with no real excuse for not bringing our own knowledge at least up to this point. What earlier knowledge was important to reading the original major works in the history of science? Ever try to read the Principia? There were theorems and proofs commonly known. We aren't seeing those as frequently so in a way are loosing a bit of mathematical and thus scientific literacy. My background is in medicine. When I read mathematics, material is clarified to a level of a qualified high school student. This may be of greater assistance to the reader than having historic mathematics clarified to the level readable by a mathematics grad student. Because of my area of interest, the writers in question did not have a college background in calculus and more modern advanced mathematics. Their writing should be valid using Euclidean Geometry. Granted their arguments may be simplified at times using modern notation and arguments available in high school mathematics texts. Like the argument used here however...its important to not lose the generality of their argument in a rush to use modern notation like an equal sign.