∞
A History of Mathematical Ideas
The
Infinite
Tablet
Mathematical ideas from Sumer to Gödel — tracing how mathematics grew from practical problems into abstract thought.
From clay tablet to incompleteness
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3000–500 BCE
Babylon & Egypt — accounting, geometry, proof
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600–200 BCE
Greece — Euclid, Archimedes, the dangerous idea of proof
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400–1400 CE
India & Islam — zero, algebra, the Kerala school
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1600–1800
Europe — calculus, probability, complex numbers
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1800–1900
Modernity — non-Euclidean space, symmetry, infinity
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1900–1930
The limits — relativity, Cantor, Gödel
∑ ∫ π ∞ √ ∂ ∇ ∈ ℕ ℝ ℂ ∀ ∃
The Infinite Tablet — front cover