Understanding mathematical texts: a hermeneutical approach

A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts

A bout 120 new Mesopotamian mathematical cuneiform texts, all from the Norwegian Schøyen Collection, are published in the author’s book A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts, Springer (2007). Most of the texts are Old Babylonian (1900–1600 BC), but some are older (Sumerian), or younger (Kassite). In addition to the presentation and discussion of these new texts, the book cont...

Understanding Short Texts

∗You can find more materials from our tutorial website: http://www.wangzhongyuan.com/tutorial/ ACL2016/Understanding-Short-Texts/ makes them extremely difficult to handle. On the other hand, search engines, seem to be able to handle short texts (queries) quite well. This however does not mean search engines have an organic understanding of short texts, rather, the semantic gap is filled in by h...

Narrative Structure of Mathematical Texts

There are many styles for the narrative structure of a mathematical document. Each mathematician has its own conventions and traditions about labeling portions of texts (e.g., chapter, section, theorem or proof ) and identifying statements according to their logical importance (e.g., theorem is more important than lemma). Such narrative/structuring labels guide the reader’s navigation of the te...

Toward a Hermeneutical Evolutionary Theory

Understanding Harim in Architecture with a Phenomenological Approach

Architecture reflects the human perception of their existential relations with the world andtherefore it creates meaningful places. Every place with its boundaries concretizes a Harim, whichis the manifestation of such existential relations. This interrelation between the boundary (Marz)and the Harim may cause us to assume them both the same, but these two are different. Althoughevery Harim has...