One studies Chinese mathematics primarily as an approach to the remarkably integrated mind of a civilization in which intellectual concepts, social organization, and aesthetic expression were thoroughly interconnected. The extent to which thirteenth-century Chinese mathematics anticipated modern or Western results is of comparatively minor relevance. As Nathan Sivin states in his Foreword, “Ideas which... were perceived merely as the outdated and misguided backdrop of 'modern' anticipations must now be evaluated as seriously as the latter, for they played no less important a role in defining the ancient scientist's conception of the natural world—and thus the direction and style of his investigation.”