Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08823_Field_TCGG T588.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 904b | 16 lines

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