Source: Zhihu.

1. When talking about theoretical things like mathematics, they criticized China people for being too practical; When it comes to the industrial revolution, people who criticize China know that poetry is directed at them. Anyway, there are many people in China. If you want to criticize, you must find the object of criticism. 2. Isn't applied mathematics made by mathematicians who pay attention to application? These people don't care whether it's fun or not, but whether they can solve the problem. Except for the elites engaged in mathematics in the west, the general public only values practicality. Not to mention that in the18th century, almost all great mathematicians only paid attention to applied mathematics. Even before the age of 50, Lagrange concluded that the era of pure mathematical progress was over. What really distinguishes the mathematics of Greek civilization from the mathematics of other civilizations is the attitude towards proof, which is a philosophical concept and has nothing to do with practicality. -First of all, it's not that China's mathematics is terrible, but that Wen Mingzhen is a fortress. Of all the civilizations that have appeared on the whole earth, only the philosophy of Greek civilization has evolved the philosophical basis of mathematics: logical deduction. Although all ancient civilizations had to develop arithmetic calculus and spatial measurement means to meet the needs of daily life, only the ancient Greeks thought of analyzing a series of reasoning behind these means from the 6th century BC. In fact, all civilizations have developed practical arithmetic and measurement, or all civilized mathematics comes from the needs of real life and has made considerable achievements. The geometry of ancient Egypt, the solution of ancient Babylonian equations and the counting system of ancient India are all indispensable conditions for the development of Greek mathematics. But the greatness of the Greeks is that a man, perhaps a philosopher, took the lead in asking questions about the principles behind these calculations. What is even more amazing is that no similar person has ever asked similar questions in other civilizations. Ancient Greek mathematics has two basic characteristics: 1. Starting from unproved propositions, axioms and postulates, the concept of proof is obtained through continuous logical reasoning. However, to develop this mathematical thought, we must have a specific philosophical soil, because only by skillfully using logical skills can we put this concept into practice. Greek philosophy only cultivates ideas. 2. Although the objects concerned by mathematicians have the same names as those actually calculated in real life: numbers and geometric figures, in Plato's time, Greek mathematicians realized that they were reasoning about completely different entities (namely abstract concepts). To sum up, it is 1. Reasoning 2 Abstraction. These ideas were cultivated by Greek philosophy. For example, all civilizations can count, but only the Greeks thought of decomposing natural numbers into products of prime numbers. So it is not that there is too little mathematics in China civilization, but that the philosophy of Greek civilization naturally contains the concept of mathematics, so that the rudiment of mathematics was developed in Greece. -dichotomy, the mathematical form we see now is actually inseparable from the development of various immortals later. Descartes was called the father of modern science because there was almost no mathematics in the Middle Ages before him, or that mathematics in Europe was completely behind other civilizations. It was not until the Renaissance that Europeans began to import all kinds of documents from other countries. It can be said that medieval mathematics was dead and only revived during the Renaissance. (This also explains why China Mathematics mentioned by @ Gong Wei contributed so much from 400 to 1500. It can be said that ancient Greek mathematics failed in the Middle Ages. As for why it failed, this is a question of European history. However, it is very interesting that most of the foreign mathematical works translated by people during the Renaissance came from the documents that flowed out before the destruction of the Alexandria Library. Therefore, the view that "China people are more practical, so math is not good" is untenable. Did Europeans suddenly start to pay attention to practicality in the Middle Ages, and then began to be romantic after the Middle Ages? After the Renaissance, mathematicians once again returned to the mathematics pursued by ancient Greek civilization. Fermat and others put forward many attractive questions by studying previous articles. When Sir Newton was born, mathematics was almost tied to physics. In fact, the development of mathematics in the18th century is largely due to the application of mathematics to other disciplines. Clairaux's prediction about the return of Halley's Comet has aroused strong repercussions among European intellectuals, including Voltaire. Voltaire once said that he could never understand why the sine of an angle was not proportional to the angle. As for mathematicians in the18th century, such as Clairaux, D'Alembert and Laplacian, their extraordinary application and other subsequent applications led them to assume that the basic goal of mathematical research was to provide models for mechanics and physics. Any branch of mathematics that does not meet these conditions is considered useless and can be ignored. The appearance of Gauss can be said to mark the glory of pure mathematics again. Since then, interest and good wizards have been called the driving force for the development of pure mathematics. -The following is a summary. It is wrong to think that China's math is not good because it is practical. It is not that China is too weak, but that ancient Greece is too open. There has also been a stagnant situation in the history of mathematics development in Europe. There has also been a period when practical purposes promoted the development of mathematics: 1. China's mathematics is not as good as that of ancient Greece, but we can proudly say that China's mathematics is still no less than that of any civilization except Greece. 2. The reason for the mathematical bunker in ancient Greece is not a realistic problem, but a philosophical soil. 3. Practicality used to be the driving force for the development of mathematics, and it is still promoting the development of mathematics. Please don't underestimate "practicality"-if you really read an introductory math book, most of you and I will choke to death in minutes. Of course, don't criticize Chinese civilization just because you read these books, and don't be arrogant or inferior to our achievements. Chinese civilization did not appear out of thin air behind closed doors, let alone lose several positions of other civilizations; But at the same time it is not without its own unique place. After reading the blog about logical thinking, there are too many slots. I really don't know where to start, so I can't see it-above.