After thinking about this book by Kevin Devlin, I start to think "who invented mathematics?" What I mean is that if the Arabs brought together the Babylonians, Indians, and Greeks, and built on that, then how exactly is that expressed? One could say that "modern mathematics" begins at Newton and Leibniz establishing calculus. What comes before that?
It's useful reading. Essentially, the extra praise for the Greeks is because they made mathematics a discipline of abstract study, despite other cultures having gone further in theory than how far along the Greeks had made it.
I feel like I should read Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah. I will order the first volume. And one other book. I'll have to think about another title I shouldn't be without, but not before I've read the four books that are on the way. I tried reading the beginning of Progress and Poverty, but I feel like it isn't particularly in our fast-paced world of commodity fetishism and chaotic economies derived from neocolonialism. Perhaps I could speed read through it like Schumpeter. Had an interesting random encounter with RJ. He was reading The Fellowship of the Ring (apparently the third time through Tolkien), but talked a bit about his interest in Henry George.
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