Arabic in the Sciences
From shay to cosa
من الشيء إلى cosa
In his Algebra al-Khwarizmi called the unknown shay, "thing", and its square māl. Latin rendered them res and census, Italian cosa and censo. So the Italians called algebra "the art of the thing", the Germans Die Coss – and Europe's algebraists were named after the Arabic unknown: the cossists.
- Author
- Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (d. c. 847)
- Field
- Mathematics
- Arabic title
- الجبر والمقابلة: «الشيء» و«المال»
- Latin title
- res, census (Latin); cosa, censo (Italian); Die Coss (German)
See also: The card for al-Khwarizmi's Algebra, which gave the science its name
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Sources
- رشدي راشد، رياضيّات الخوارزميّ: تأسيس علم الجبر، مركز دراسات الوحدة العربيّة، ص٣٢ وحاشيتها
- Wikipedia, «Cossist»: the unknown called shai, Latin res, Italian cosa; l'arte della cosa, Die Coss
- Charles Hutton, A Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary (1796), «Coss»
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