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The main defects of Chinese mathematical and scientific thought were both substantive and logical. In regard to logic, Chinese thought lacked the logic of proof as well as the concepts of mathematical proof as constructed in Euclid’s Elements. It likewise lacked Hindu-Arabic numerals and the zero until about the thirteenth century. Perhaps most important, the Chinese had no trigonometry, an essential part of mathematical astronomy. As noted earlier, to compensate for this, the Chinese employed Arab astronomers in the Chinese Astronomical Bureau in Peking from the thirteenth century onward.
Credit: Toby E. Huff. 1995. The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and The Wets, Cambridge University Press.
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