Discussion

Gerard of Cremona

jmclnx: Unfortunately few people know without the Muslim Scholars after the fall of Rome, little of the ancient texts would have survived.But I wonder, was some meaning lost from Greek|Latin -> Arabic -> Latin ?

Beijinger: Greek|Latin -> Arabic -> LatinHis pupil, the English scholastic Daniel of Morley, recorded one of Gerhard's methods[6] in translation: His Mozarabic assistant Ghalib (Latinized Galippus)[7] translated the text orally into medieval Castilian, Gerhard listened and wrote the text down in Latin. In the case of the Almagest, which had been translated from its original language of Ancient Greek first into Syriac, then into Arabic, and which Gerhard translated into Latin via the oral route of Castilian, this long chain of transmission introduced numerous sources of error.

riffraff: I think it's pretty sure some of it was.Just consider that the X in math is not a latin X but a Greek Χ (chi) :)

yorwba: Most mathematical notation wasn't invented until centuries later. At the time, they would just write calculations out in words. In particular, the use of x representing an unknown quantity was introduced by Descartes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_algebra#The_symbol_...