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06692_Field_TCUM T257.txt
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1996-04-10
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our visual sense, as the photograph and the movie today may
well remind us. And long before literate technology, the binary
factors of hands and feet sufficed to launch man on the path
of counting. Indeed, the mathematical Leibniz saw in the
mystic elegance of the binary system of zero and 1 the image
of Creation. The unity of the Supreme Being operating in the
void by binary function would, he felt, suffice to make all beings
from the void.
Dantzig reminds us also that in the age of manuscript
there was a chaotic variety of signs for numerals, and that
they did not assume a stable form until printing. Although this
was one of the least of the cultural effects of printing, it should
serve to recall that one of the big factors in the Greek adoption
of the letters of the phonetic alphabet was the prestige and
currency of the number system of the Phoenician traders. The