Arithmetic of the Medieval Universities
“course material fir a master’s degree is today common knowledge for third grade school children, and although some of the more profound medieval processes of ratio and proportions are today taught in eighth-grade arithmetic classes, medieval arithmetic must not be regarded as superficial or merely elementary” “ In fact, ‘computus,’ which originally meant merely computation, soon came to be associated exclusively with the technical study of Easter reckoning.” “ it is known that Church councils from the time of Charlemagne demanded that the clergy have a knowledge of music and be able to compute the date of Easter.” The above three quotes are not necessary three thinking points I had when reading the paper. Instead these three quotes allow me to build on my feeling/response to this paper. Firstly, it reminds me of a previous blog post we did about “apply” mathematics and “pure” mathematics. As discussed earlier, as the belief and culture changes the idea of “p...
Thanks Duncan!
ReplyDelete