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06691_Field_TCUM T256.txt
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1996-04-10
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new mathematics and physics. Nor is writing necessary to an
electric technology. Of course, writing and conventional
arithmetic may long continue to be of the utmost use to man,
for all that. Even Einstein could not face the new quantum
physics with comfort. Too visual a Newtonian for the new task,
he said that quanta could not be handled mathematically. That
is as much as to say that poetry cannot be properly translated
into merely visual form on the printed page.
Dantzig develops his points about number by saying that
a literate population soon departs from the abacus and from
finger enumeration, though arithmetic manuals in the
Renaissance continued to give elaborate rules for calculating on
the hands. It could be true that numbers preceded literacy in
some cultures, but so did visual stress precede writing. For
writing is only the principal manifestation of the extension of