Old Islamic Tile Patterns Show Modern Math Insight

arbitraryaardvark writes "Reuters reports that medieval Muslims made a mega math marvel. Tile patterns on middle eastern mosques display a kind of quasicrystalline effect that was unknown in the west until rediscovered by Penrose in the 1970s. 'Quasicrystalline patterns comprise a set of interlocking units whose pattern never repeats, even when extended infinitely in all directions, and possess a special form of symmetry.' It isn't known if the mosque designers understood the math behind the patterns or not."

Comments

Why wouldn't they?

[nebaz]

It seems fairly self important to assume that they didn't understand the math behind the tiles. They generated them, didn't they? Islamic culture was well considered to be centuries ahead of Europe during that time period. They had access to some of the ancient Greek writings that Europe only rediscovered years later. My question is, and I don't mean to troll, what happened? From my perspective, it seems that many people almost disdain the idea of progress in culture and arts now.

Re:Why wouldn't they?

[grimdawg]

Most patterns are discovered before the mathematics behind them is fully understood.

A child draws a cube without realising its rotational symmetries are S_4, and draws a circle without knowledge of its useful properties. In the case of decorations, aesthetics tend to come first. When did you first draw a spiral? Did you realise it was fractal?

Hell, most modern mathematics comes from the investigation of an object we thought we knew all about.

It's more than likely the pattern was designed for aesthetic reasons. I'm not trying to run down the guys, but the kind of insight we're talking about here appears at face value to require a long academic tradition. It's not the kind of thing you're likely to stumble on.

Re:Why wouldn't they?

[fub]

While the letters we use right now are Latin, the numbers are Arabic. What tells you that about the mathematical abilities of the middle east in those times, compared with the european insight?

Re:Why wouldn't they?

[SatanicPuppy]

They may very well have understood them...You have to remember, the Dark Ages for us was the Enlightenment for them. They were doing a lot of interesting math, and building architecturally advanced structures embodying complex mathematical concepts when we were wallowing around in superstitious ignorance.

Just because things have swung back the other way today, doesn't mean they won't swing back again tomorrow...That's the real lesson to learn from all the fundamentalist chrsitian movements...A society that doesn't appreciate some form of spirituality is pretty empty, but a society to embraces spirituality above all other things is hardly removed from barbarism.

Nice Work - but NO evidence of mathematics

[hackershandbook]

I have an ongoing debate with a friend who is both a philosopher of science and a mathematics teacher.

Suffice it to say that I wish he had taugh me mathematics (and algebra, geometry, calculus) rather than the teachers I had ..

One of the things that come up in our discussions is the idea the the Ancient Egyptians knew about PHI and PI - as can be seen from the structure of their architecture - and that the builders of Stonehenge also had working knowledge of trigonometry.

But as a mathematician - he denies that the there was any knowledge of "mathematics" because the principles were never described "mathematically" - just used in an "intuitive way".

"Without the maths", he said, "You can't argue that they understood the maths" and, he continued, "if they never expressed their finding in mathematical terms (i.e. in formulas with proofs) - then it isn't maths anyway - its just architecture"