Posts Tagged number system
The History of Mathematics
Mathematics has been in people’s lives from the beginning of time. Even in prehistory was a person required to perform mathematical tasks. The number of hunters, tools or members of a family were probably shown by the fingers on one or more hands, which is probably why today’s number systems are based on the number 5 or 10.
The second step probably arose out of the need to organise greater quantities: such as between young and older hunters, light or heavy weaponry, large or small hides.
Mathematics – A Beautiful Evolution
Most of the mathematical concepts we encounter every day – numbers, addition, subtraction – seem so basic, so hard to avoid in discussing reality on even the most basic level, that it’s hard to imagine someone having to sit down and invent them. Who was the first person to look at two rocks and think, “Two more and I’ve got four?” The very idea almost seems absurd.
But mathematics is, in part, a language – not just a set of logical relationships and entailments that seems deeper than words, but a set of notations that allow us to discover those relationships. You can’t see that twice two makes four, until you have a symbol for “two” that your brain can operate with. And those symbols – that language – did have to develop, strange as it may seem. (Prehistoric artifacts seem to indicate that the earliest humans had only four “numbers” at their disposal “none,” “one,” “two,” and “many” – showing just how much our ability to talk about numbers depends on having the right words for them.)