Historically, as far away as Babylon and Egypt, due to the needs of human life and labor production, a series of arithmetic and geometry knowledge have been accumulated. After the Greek era, these scattered knowledge were raised to a theoretical system. During the Western Renaissance, in mathematics, analytic geometry was founded and calculus was invented, which made mathematics develop from constant mathematics to a new stage of variable mathematics. From17th century to19th century, people applied mathematics to many fields with great enthusiasm, made great achievements and accumulated a lot of new mathematical knowledge and methods. In order to make the results reliable and obtain the foundation for further development, people established the theoretical basis and strict system of calculus in the19th century. This series of mathematical theoretical progress gave birth to the great development of pure mathematics in the early 20th century. Mathematical theory has been developed unprecedentedly, in which formalism and structuralism of mathematics have exerted a wide influence until it affects the teaching content and methods of basic mathematics education. Since the second half of the 20th century, pure mathematics has developed rapidly and entered an era of more extensive and in-depth application in science, technology, economy, management and many other fields. The combination of mathematics and mathematics at a higher level, especially in the high-tech field, has made endless progress, even exceeding people's expectations, showing its great impetus to social development.
Learning the history of mathematics is important to understand and help the development of mathematics, but perhaps it is more important to understand the importance of mathematics to social development through the history of mathematics; When people have a clearer understanding of the role of mathematics in social development, it will in turn better promote the development of mathematics itself. From the above simple analysis of the history of mathematics, we can see that the role of mathematics in social development is roughly manifested in the following three aspects:
The application of mathematics. Fundamentally speaking, mathematics comes from practice. It is a universal language to describe the relationship between spatial form and quantity in natural phenomena and social phenomena, so mathematics is the most widely used. It provides methods and tools for people's daily life, production, science, technology, economy, management, medicine and many other aspects; Provide mathematical ideas, models and methods for various innovations. Sometimes mathematics can grasp some essential problems in the process of natural and social development in advance and help mankind make breakthrough progress. The application of mathematics to society is multifaceted, extensive and profound, and it plays a universal and huge role in promoting social development.
The function of core mathematics (or pure mathematics). Once mathematics forms a discipline system, on the one hand, it constantly communicates and promotes with relevant practical background, on the other hand, it develops according to its own laws. Therefore, its achievement is an important symbol of a country's development level. It plays a fundamental role in all aspects of national development; The level of mathematics application depends on the development level of mathematics itself and needs its support and application.
Mathematics provides a reliable and effective way of thinking for human society-the way of thinking combining induction and deduction. Induction and deduction's way of thinking is a universal scientific way of thinking, but it has the most definite form in mathematics, and mathematics is its best carrier. It can be said that it originated and developed from mathematical research. Mathematical thinking and literacy are also conducive to the formation of people's ability to analyze and think systematically from the fundamental point, and to the formation of a style of seeking truth from facts, not blindly following others and not superstitious about authority. Today, when quality education is advocated, we should help people accomplish it more consciously through mathematics education.
China and the West are different in the fundamental starting point and basic mode of thinking of cultural traditions. It is obvious from the cultural traditions of Greece and the West that mathematics is one of the key points. However, mathematics has no place in China's inherent cultural tradition. Even in modern times, people may still regard it as a science or even a tool. Therefore, for the sake of China's modernization and national rejuvenation, it is urgent to integrate mathematics into China's cultural tradition on the basis of China's excellent cultural tradition. This is an extremely important, great and long-term arduous task.