Number: The Language of Science

Tobias Dantzig’s Number is a bit dated, but he writes with a contagious enthusiasm as he describes the history of numbers and numeracy over the last two thousand years. “It is not a story of brilliant achievement, heroic deeds, or noble sacrifice. It is a story of blind stumbling and chance discovery, of groping in the dark and refusing to admit the light. It is a story replete with obscurantism and prejudice, of sound judgement often eclipsed by loyalty to tradition, and of reason long held subservient to custom. In short, it is a human story.”