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b_b · 4540 days ago · link · · parent · post: Wordless, visual proof of the area of a circle using only beads and a ruler
Have you ever seen Archimedes' proof of the value of pi and the area of a circle? He used geometry also, employing many sided polygons to approximate the value. It makes one wonder why the Greeks didn't discover the principle of limits and then discover calculus. My suspicion is that since they didn't use a place value number system that it was too difficult to do algebra and complex calculations (this is obviously wildly speculative and probably has nothing to do with reality). One wonders if the world would have turned out any different if calculus were 2000 years older than it is.