雙語科技百科(數學) 第29期:十進制的使用

The Use of the Decimal System

十進制的使用

According to the oracle inscription shown on tortoiseshells or animal bones，Chinese people in the Shang Dynasty was already able to use 13 words-one，two，three，four, flue，six, seven，eight, nine，ten，hundred，thousand，and ten thousand-to denote any number within 100，ver,the largest number that can be found is 30，000. The notions of odd，even，and multiple also appeared on the oracle inscriptions.

據甲骨卜辭記載，商代的人們已經學會用一、二、三、四、五、六、七、八、九、十、百、千、萬這13個單字記十萬以內的任何數字，但是現在能夠證實的當時最大的數字是三萬。甲骨卜辭中還有奇數、偶數和倍數的概念。

An example of how the ancient Chinese used the decimal system may be seen in an inscription from the thirteenth century BC，in which “547 days” is written “five hundred plus four decades plus seven of days.”The Chinese wrote with characters instead of an alphabet. In the Western alphabet, when writing out numbers greater than nine，new words are used(for example，ten，eleven，and so on ) Chi-nese characters，ten is ten-blank and eleven is ten-one(zero was left as a blank space:405 is “four blank five”) was much easier than inventing a new char-acter for each number. Having a decimal system from the beginning was a big ad-vantage in making mathematical advances. The first evidence of decimals in Europe is in a Spanish manuscript of AD 976.

根據公元前13世紀的甲骨文記載，“547天”被寫作“500天加40天再加7天”，從此例可以看出中國古人是如何使用十進制的。和別的語言不同，漢語用的是文字而不是字母。西方語言在記載大於9的數字時，使用新詞(例如10,11，等)。漢語中，10爲十，11爲十一(零留作空位:405爲“四百零五”)，較西方語言中每個數字以一個單詞來對應而言，這種寫法容易得多。中國古人從最初就使用十進制進行運算，就數學發展而言，存在很大優勢。而在歐洲，有關十進制的最早記載是在公元976年的一份西班牙手稿中。

The decimal system，as a very important invention by the Chinese，boasts great significance in world mathematic history. Joseph Needham(1900一1995)，a famous scientific historian who specialized in Chinese sciences，noted that it was virtually impossible for human beings to have a unified world without the decimal system，and the Chinese numeral system in the Shang Dynasty was basically more advanced and scientific than that of contemporary Babylon and Egypt.

十進制是中國人民的一項傑出創造，在世界數學史上有重要意義。著名的英國科學史學家李約瑟教授曾對中國商代記數法予以很高的評價，“如果沒有這種十進制，就幾乎不可能出現我們現在這個統一化的世界了”。李約瑟說，“總的說來，商代的數字系統比同一時代的古巴比倫和古埃及更爲先進更爲科學。”