Quote:
Originally Posted by Peregrino
Actually, IIRC, the Arabs got almost everything from India. They get credit because Western Europe was having "difficulties" and not widely travelled (lacking a mechanism for exchange of information) until the Crusades. The sole exception was Southern (Moorish) Spain and the big reason it was enlightened is because the Catholic Church couldn't destroy the ancient Greek texts the Moorish scholars treasured.
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Spot on.
Arab culture contributed little to mathematics other than assembling the works of others.
Morris Kline wrote a pretty good liberal arts book on math which illuminates some of the history and importance of various cultures' contributions (it also gives basic teaching of most areas except complex analysis).
It was originally titled:
Mathematics for Liberal Arts and is currently available in paperback under the title:
Mathematics for the Nonmathematician.