THE historical past of arithmetic has a picture drawback. It’s typically offered as a gathering of minds amongst historical Greeks who turned masters of logic. Pythagoras, Euclid and their friends honed the instruments for proving theorems and that led them to the most important outcomes of historical occasions. Ultimately, different European greats like Leonhard Euler and Isaac Newton got here alongside and made maths fashionable, which is how we bought to the place we’re as we speak.
However, after all, this telling is tremendously distorted. The historical past of maths is way richer, extra chaotic and extra various than it’s given credit score for. So …