Subject: [HM] Logos and ratio
From: Luigi Borzacchini (gibi@pascal.dm.uniba.it)
Date: Wed Sep 20 2000 - 03:07:54 EDT
I would like to add a point which could be interesting for HM: the
difference in the semantic fields of the Greek "logos" and the Latin
"ratio".
Even though they are supposed equivalent (ratio was the term for logos
in Latin), they stemmed from two different indoeuropean roots.
Logos, legein is from *leg (to collect, to pick up, to say), and had
no mathematical meaning in Homer, Hesiod and Greek Lyric.
At the opposite ratio, reor is from *ree (to count, to believe) was
first and foremost an arithmetical term and had no linguistic employment,
but got easily the meanings of reason, rationale, etc. (as in German
Rechnung, Recht). For the accountants, we must remember that in Latin
the accountant was the 'rationarius'.
This remark could be interesting to understand the evolution of the
concept of ratio from the Greek logos, which was not a number but a
relationship between magnitudes (or numbers), more a geometrical than
an arithmetical term, to the idea of rational number.
Probably this evolution was fostered in the Middle Ages by the
arithmetical nature of the Latin word ratio, so that it was naturally
in the hands of the Italian "ragionieri" and got easily a practical and
arithmetical meaning.
Luigi Borzacchini
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Wed Sep 20 2000 - 12:10:30 EDT