A Concise History of Mathematics; Pages 1-50

Summary: Though math has been around for many years, little progress was made in understanding numerical values and space relations until more modern times. It was went the transition occurred from the mere gathering of food to its actual production, from hunting and fishing to agriculture. The book has a great deal of information, for example it talks about the old Fiji Island language. It mentions how ten boats were called bola, and ten coconuts were called koro, and a thousand coconuts were referred to as saloro. Actually, the first occurrence of numerical terms began to come into play as a quantitative meaning, rather than a qualitative. They were used to make distinctions between one thing, to two things, and many of something.

Quotation: “The development of the crafts of commerce stimulated this crystallization of number concept. Numbers were arranged and bundled into larger units, usually by the use of the fingers of the hand or of both hands, a natural procedure in trading” (Struik 10)

Reaction: As explained in the quote, trading actually had a great significance in mathematics. With trading, the individuals were able to build on their math knowledge of differentiating amount from one another. And what is silly now, was sure not humorous back in the early times. I’m talking about counting with fingers. The men doing the trading might have needed to count with their fingers on a daily bases, and now-a-days we laugh when someone pulls out the finger count. The novel is told in first person, is very much limited. The narrator is just explaining a great deal of events, and the significance/importance math related topics.