The Wonderful World of Mathematics

80 Pages·1955·10.461 MB·English

by  Lancelot Hogben

I|!!l!!it '"'lis,
:^"
\.

Digitized by the Internet Archive
2010
in
http://www.archive.org/details/wonderfulworldofOOhogb

0^ ^CKO^NrTENTS
The Beginning Time and Tally
:
Ancient Kgypt : Taxes and Triangles 12
Babylon and Assyria Square and Circle 20
:
Phoenician Voyages Stars and Steering 26
:
Greece and Rome Proof and Progress 30
:
The Moslem Empire Numbers and Nothing 44
:
Western Europe Graphs and Gravity 52
:
The Industrial World: Power and Precision 62
Ijbnlr.-nfrnncrr-;^f.ir-!Tjit.itncNr. ^^-10508
Produced by Rathbonc Books, London - Printed in Great Britain by L. T. A. Robinson, Ltd., London
WONDERFUL WORLD
THE
MATHEMATICS
OF
Ik'll
LANCE^,^^GBEN
seniwOkti school
Art by
Andre^
Charles Keeping
Kenneth Symonds
maps by Marjorie Saynor
GARDEN CITY BOOKS GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
FIRST PUBI.ISHKO IN IHI El) STATES (1I- AMI kl( ,\ IN
Time and Tally
FOR MY one deer you must give me three ofyour spearheads.
The earliest men and women like ourselves lived about
twenty-five thousand years ago. They could say all this with
their hands,simplybypointingonefingeratthedeerandthreeatthe
spearheads. The primitive way of counting with one finger for
one thing and three fingers for three things, was the only kind of
arithmetic they knew. For thousands ofyears such people thought of
any quantity greater than three as a heap or pile.
They had no towns, no villages. They were wanderers who trekked
from place to place in search of animals and birds to hunt and of
berries, roots, and grain to gather. The only goods they possessed
were the skins ofanimals, to protect them from the cold night air, a
few hunting weapons, crude vessels to hold water, and perhaps some
kind oflucky charm, such as a necklace ofbear's teeth or sea-shells.
There was no need for them toknow much arithmetic. Eventheir
simple finger-counting was useful only on the rare occasions when
theywantedtoexchangegoodswiththemembersofsomeothertribe.