Every field of human endeavour exists for a reason, but often its origins get lost in the mist of time. Mathematics is no exception. The most ancient mathematical texts that made it to us (from ca. 2000 BC) do not mention how mathematics appeared, although this is not difficult to guess. Keeping track of domestic animals and performing commercial transactions are some of the activities likely responsible for the birth of arithmetic. Geometry probably sprouted from needs related to the division of agricultural land and the building of large constructions. The curious mind of the prehistoric thinker then got detached from practical purposes and started investigating the properties of numbers, triangles, circles and other abstract mathematical objects, a process that continues today at a much higher level and with incredible benefit for our civilization. Without mathematics, we would still live in the Bronze Age.
Florin Diacu is a professor of mathematics at the University of Victoria and author of The Lost Millennium: History’s Timetables under Siege, whose second edition was published in 2011 by Johns Hopkins University Press.
Advertisement
Advertisement