reduction of any kind of space or motion or energy into a 
uniform repeatable formula. Dantzig explains in his Number:  
The Language of Science  a great step in numeration and 
calculation taken by the Phoenicians under commercial 
pressure: “The ordinal numeration in which numbers are 
represented by the letters of an alphabet in their spoken 
succession.” (p 24; see also p. 221.)

     But using letters, Greek and Roman alike never got near a 
method suited to arithmetical operations: “This is why, from 
the beginning of history until the advent of our modern 
positional  numeration, so little progress was made in the art of 
reckoning.” (p. 25) That is, until number was given a visual, 
spatial character and abstracted from its audile-tactile matrix 
it could not be separated from the magical domain. “A man 
skilled in the art was regarded as endowed with almost