正負術及其在韓日之流傳 : 以黃胤錫 vs. 建部賢弘為例 (The study of the history of mathematics 2016)

Abstract

Suanxue qimeng 算學啟蒙 (1299) by Zhu Shijie 朱世傑 in thirteenth-century China is one of the mathematical texts which made great influence over Korean and Japanese mathematics. A prior question is in the process of transmission, how mathematician of these two cultures accommodated the zhengfu shu 正負術 and its application in the text, which deserves attention due to the rule's difficulty to comprehend. By adopting a comparative history approach, I will in the article investigate how Korean Hwang Yun-sok 黃胤錫 and Japanese Takebe Katahiro 建部賢弘 got to understand the zhengfu shu. The texts of mathematics under study are Hwang Yun-sok's Sanhak ibmun 算學入門 (1744) and Takebe Katahiro's Sangaku keimo genkai taisei 算學啟蒙諺解大成 (1690) respectively. Both of their demonstrations and arguments in the subject apparently are beneficial to our better understanding of the transmission issues in the history of mathematics in East Asia.