Historical Counting
Complex systems of dactylonomy were used in the ancient world. This counting was in use in Persia in the first century CE, and thus may have originated there; it continued in the Islamic world through the Middle Ages, and is mentioned in poetry and the Quran. A very similar form is presented by the English monk and historian Bede in the first chapter of his De temporum ratione, (725), entitled "Tractatus de computo, vel loquela per gestum digitorum", which allowed counting up to 9,999 on two hands, though it was apparently little-used for numbers of 100 or more. This system remained in use through the European Middle Ages, being presented in slightly modified form by Luca Pacioli in his seminal Summa de Arithmetica (1494).
Read more about this topic: Finger Counting
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or counting:
“The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.”
—Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)
“If all power is in the people, if there is no higher law than their will, and if by counting their votes, their will may be ascertainedthen the people may entrust all their power to anyone, and the power of the pretender and the usurper is then legitimate. It is not to be challenged since it came originally from the sovereign people.”
—Walter Lippmann (18891974)