Top Highlights

• Distinguish between established fact, hypothesis, and tradition,
• Our first conceptions of number and form date back to times as far removed as the Old Stone Age, the Paleolithic.
• Little progress was made in understanding numerical values and space relations until the transition occurred from the mere gathering of food to its actual production, from hunting and fishing to agriculture.
• a revolution in which the passive attitude of man toward nature turned into an active one, we enter the New Stone Age, the Neolithic.
• The development of the crafts of commerce stimulated this crystallization of the number concept. Numbers were arranged and bundled into larger units, usually by the use of the fingers of the hand or of both hands, a natural procedure in trading. This led to numeration first with five, later with ten as a base, completed by addition and sometimes by...