On ancient extreme thoughts.

Liu Hui, a mathematician in the Wei and Jin Dynasties in China, founded the famous "cyclotomy" when he annotated Nine Chapters of Arithmetic. He creatively applied the idea of limit to the field of mathematics. He set the radius of the circle as one foot, starting from the regular hexagon inscribed in the circle, doubling the number of sides at a time, and using Pythagorean theorem to calculate the inscribed area of the regular polygon. The more sides inscribed with a regular polygon, the closer the area of the inscribed polygon is to the area of a circle.

As Liu Hui said, "Cut it carefully, cut it less, cut it again, and you will be surrounded, and nothing will be lost." This idea is applied to solve the practical problem of finding pi, "If you can't cut it, you will encircle it." This thought is the practical application of Mohism's "inseparable" thought.

Extended data:

The further development of limit thought is closely related to the establishment of calculus. /kloc-in the 0/6th century, Europe was in the embryonic stage of capitalism and its productive forces developed greatly. A large number of problems in production and technology cannot be solved by elementary mathematics alone. Mathematics is required to break through the scope of traditional research constants and provide new tools that can be used to describe and study the process of motion change. This is the social background to promote extreme development and establish calculus.

The thought of limit reveals the unity of opposites between variables and constants, infinity and finiteness, which is the application of the law of unity of opposites of materialist dialectics in the field of mathematics. With the help of limit thought, people can know infinity from finiteness, change from invariability, curve from straight line, qualitative change from quantitative change and accuracy from approximation.