Babylonian Word Problems: Skills Training or Just Artificial?

Hey everyone,

Just finishing up the reading from Dr. Gerofsky’s chapter for this week. It’s always cool to engage with a text written by our own professor! While reading through the section on Babylonian word problems, there were three specific things that really made me stop and think.

First, the complete artificiality of these ancient problems. They are dressed up to look like practical, real-world scenarios, but as soon as you analyze the known and unknown quantities, you realize they were completely disconnected from immediate, everyday practice.

Second, Høyrup’s distinction between Babylonian and Greek mathematics. It was striking to read that Babylonian scribal schools used these problem texts primarily to train students in the methods already available at hand, whereas Greek mathematics grew out of a desire to solve actual problems by devising brand new methods.

Third, the inclusion of what the text calls "useless second-degree problems". It made me pause to realize these were put into the texts not for any inherent mathematical interest, but literally just because they could be solved using the methods the scribes already possessed.

Dr. Gerofsky points out that we shouldn't necessarily judge this through a modern lens as just inferior skills training, but rather understand it as a reflection of the specific mathematical discourses available 1500 years before the Greeks.

Looking forward to hearing what everyone else thought about the reading.