CS> The cultural aspects of the development of numbers are emphasized in
CS> Karl Menninger: Number Words and Number Symbols. (translation from
CS> "Zahlwort und Ziffer", 1st ed. in German: 1957). The publisher of the
CS> English translation was, I believe, an American university press.
This is now available as an inexpensive reprint from Dover Books.
Fernando
--Fernando Q. Gouvea Department of Mathematics Editor, MAA Online Colby College http://www.maa.org fqgouvea@colby.edu http://www.colby.edu/math ==========================================================
I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible. -- Karl Friedrich Gauss