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[Previous] branches of mathematics including algebra (19) 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.

It has now been clearly and irrefutably shown that the importation from foreign countries of the principles and procedures of civilization, and the acquisition from them of sciences and techniques-- [Next]


If we convenient as the solved, for figures, the school guessing known attention is to the Algebra. 19. "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. allow the equation to be written with other and less symbols, it may be considered as beginning at least as early 3rd century. If we permit it to be stated in words and simple cases of positive roots, by the aid of geometric science was known to Euclid and others of the Alexandrian as early as 300 B.C. If we permit of more or less scientific in achieving a solution, algebra may be said to have been nearly 2000 years B.C., and it had probably attracted the of the intellectual class much earlier... The name `algebra' quite fortuitous. When Mohammed ibn Músá al-Khowarizmí ... wrote in Baghdad (c. 825) he gave to one of his works the name Al-jebr w'al-muqábalah. The title is sometimes translated as `restoration and equation,' but the meaning was not clear even later Arab writers." Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952, s.v.
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