代数”一词来自阿拉伯文，为什么不是希腊文？因为希腊字母与数字用一样的符号，不能直接写公式。另外加标签，还是会眼花缭乱。代数的字源推翻了源自希腊的数学，既然没有代数，几何也不能做。欧几里得几何原本之说，大有问题。
代数”与“阿拉伯数字”，欧洲人认为是Khwarizmi 花剌子米在九世纪创造的。以前阿拉伯人几千年用什么数字？为什么不用阿拉伯所在地巴比伦的数字？因为巴比伦文字/数字不先进，被淘汰了。
维基百科：
The word "algebra" is derived from the Arabic word ????? al-jabr, and this comes from the treatise written in the year 830 by the medieval Persian mathematician, Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, whose Arabic title, Kitāb al-mu?ta?ar fī ?isāb al-?abr wa-l-muqābala, can be translated as The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing. The treatise provided for the systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations. According to one history, "[i]t is not certain just what the terms al-jabr and muqabalah mean, but the usual interpretation is similar to that implied in the previous translation. The word 'al-jabr' presumably meant something like 'restoration' or 'completion' and seems to refer to the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation; the word 'muqabalah' is said to refer to 'reduction' or 'balancing'—that is, the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides of the equation. Arabic influence in Spain long after the time of al-Khwarizmi is found in Don Quixote, where the word 'algebrista' is used for a bone-setter, that is, a 'restorer'."[1] The term is used by al-Khwarizmi to describe the operations that he introduced, "reduction" and "balancing", referring to the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation, that is, the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides of the equation.[2]
