
Seki Takakazu - Hooke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seki_Takakazu
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luminati
Coincidentally, happen to be in Kerala on a work related trip.

The "Newton" of India/Indic/Hindu culture would be Madhava of Sangamagrama[1],
the founder of the Kerala School of Math. Did some impressive work on
calculus, that might have actually even predated Newton/Leibnitz et al.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhava_of_Sangamagrama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhava_of_Sangamagrama)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pElvQdcaGXE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pElvQdcaGXE)
[Towards the end of the video iirc]

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earthicus
I've heard of this mathematician several times over the years, but have never
seen the capabilities and point of view of his calculus-like system actually
described. Does anyone know of a more detailed article or book that gives such
a description?

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earthicus
One of the books given in the references is actually available in it's
entirety [1] and appears to be quite good. Chapter 6 covers Seki, Chapter 7 is
about his contemporaries and western influences (or lack there-of), and
Chapter 8 is about the 'yenri', which is the Calculus system in question.

[1]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=J1YNAAAAYAAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=J1YNAAAAYAAJ)

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S4M
I wonder how many similar genius are now completely unknown.

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bcaa7f3a8bbc
And again, here's my idea of a Sci-Fi novel.

Information retrieval is difficult. Many important works in various subjects
in human history have been developed much earlier than they were widely known.
They remained unknown due to geography, language, culture, and popularity
barriers. Even today when everything is online, sometimes important works are
still ignored until rediscovered.

What if an alien civilization came to Earth in ~4000 B.C.E and gave human
civilizations worldwide a information system, which can: (1) search keywords
and obtain full text of any written work related to a topic, (2) obtain the
state-of-art researches on a subject by querying it with natural language, (3)
create an online forum for scholars to communicate their works, (4) translate
the text to any language.

That is, the alien does not directly create or teach any knowledge for/to
humans, but help humans to retrieve and communicate existing knowledge to the
maximum extent.

What could the alternative human history be? Would we discover Newtonian
mechanics 1000 years earlier? You know, if the Greek tradition was followed,
or if Arabic scholars were able to communicate their researches directly with
Europeans and Asians, discovering Newtonian mechanics 1000 years earlier
sounds extremely plausible.

Last time I asked this question, someone suggested that the inevitable
consequence is the creation of a global patent system, in which pure objective
knowledge can also be patented.

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Bakary
Some themes you can explore in your novel:

\- how the scientifc method itself develops, or whether it develops at all

\- how the tool affects the power structure of society. Would its use be
banned for the lesser classes? Would literacy itself be banned or discouraged?

\- Would religions, art, or culture evolve differently? Would the biodiversity
of ideas actually reduce?

Perhaps the most compelling angle would be the one where the tool doesn't work
according to our modern technocratic expectations.

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bcaa7f3a8bbc
Insightful comment.

> _Would the biodiversity of ideas actually reduce? [...] the tool doesn 't
> work according to our modern technocratic expectations._

One failure mode immediately comes to my mind: some fields of researches would
progress rapidly, but after a while the entire human civilization may stuck
(like a broken hill climbing algorithm) at a local optimum forever and wastes
a lot of time.

