Primitive Number Systems (Pamphlet)

Description

Author: Conant, Levi L. (1857-1916)

Publisher: Smithsonian Institution

Pub Date: 1893

Binding: Paperback

Condition: Fair to Good.  Binding tight.  No marks, tears, bends or folds.  This report was excised from the hardcover 1892 Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution.  That hardcover was falling apart, and I had this report and several others rebound in paperback.

Notes: Pamphlet.  Conant spent his career as a mathematics professor.  His most famous work was The Number Concept: Its Origin and Development, originally published in 1896 and still in print today.  This pamphlet is more an anthropology of numbers and number systems, and is very much a product of its day.  “Savages”,”primitives”, “barbarous tribes” are common throughout.  Conant describes basic number systems throughout the world as varying between concepts of one, perhaps two, increasing to “many.”  He also argues that a base twelve number system is more logical than a base ten.  Maybe when we meet the first extraterrestrial race they’ll be using some mathematical concept that will make us modern humans look like children counting on our fingers.  “Oh, man, why didn’t we think of that?”  Really a fascinating read.