The HinduOCoArabic numeral system (1, 2, 3, ...) is one of mankind''sgreatest achievements and one of its most commonly usedinventions. How did it originate? Those who have written about thenumeral system have hypothesized that it originated in India; however, there is little evidence to support this claim. This book provides considerable evidence to show that theHinduOCoArabic numeral system, despite its commonly accepted name, has its origins in the Chinese rod numeral system. This system waswidely used in China from antiquity till the 16th century. It was usedby officials, astronomers, traders and others to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and other arithmetic operations, and also used by mathematicians to develop arithmetic andalgebra. Based on this system, numerous mathematical treatises werewritten."

An entertaining look at the origins of mathematical symbols While all of us regularly use basic math symbols such as those for plus, minus, and equals, few of us know that many of these symbols weren't available before the sixteenth century. What did mathematicians rely on for their work before then? And how did mathematical notations evolve into what we know today? In Enlightening Symbols, popular math writer Joseph Mazur explains the fascinating history behind the development of our mathematical notation system. He shows how symbols were used initially, how one symbol replaced another over time, and how written math was conveyed before and after symbols became widely adopted. Traversing mathematical history and the foundations of numerals in different cultures, Mazur looks at how historians have disagreed over the origins of the numerical system for the past two centuries. He follows the transfigurations of algebra from a rhetorical style to a symbolic one, demonstrating that most algebra before the sixteenth century was written in prose or in verse employing the written names of numerals. Mazur also investigates the subconscious and psychological effects that mathematical symbols have had on mathematical thought, moods, meaning, communication, and comprehension. He considers how these symbols influence us (through similarity, association, identity, resemblance, and repeated imagery), how they lead to new ideas by subconscious associations, how they make connections between experience and the unknown, and how they contribute to the communication of basic mathematics. From words to abbreviations to symbols, this book shows how math evolved to the familiar forms we use today.

Zero has been axial in human development, but the origin and discovery of zero has never been satisfactorily addressed by a comprehensive, systematic and above all interdisciplinary research program. In this volume, over 40 international scholars explore zero under four broad themes: history; religion, philosophy & linguistics; arts; and mathematics & the sciences. Some propose that the invention/discovery of zero may have been facilitated by the prior evolution of a sophisticated concept of Nothingness or Emptiness (as it is understood in non-European traditions); and conversely, inhibited by the absence of, or aversion to, such a concept of Nothingness in the West. But not all scholars agree. Join the debate.

The forty-six short stories collected in this volume were originally published in The Colored American Magazine or The Crisis between 1900 and 1920. The Introduction to the collection, written by Elizabeth Ammons, explores the role played by the major black magazines of that period and demonstrates how these two magazines provided the largest secular outlets for short fiction by black women at the turn of the century.

Makes key resources widely availableThese books provide the only complete record -- much fuller than that available through any other printed source -- of the major manuscripts of Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.Valuable primary informationThese editions -- with their expensive facsimile reproductions, beta-radiographs of the watermarks, detailed bibliographical descriptions, transcriptions, textural notes, collations, bibliographies of relevant studies of the MSS, and indexes -- will remain repositories of primary information on the poems and prose of the younger Romantics for the next century.

Writing to his publisher in 1813, Shelley expressed the hope that two of his major works should form one volume; nearly two centuries later, the second volume of the Johns Hopkins edition of The Complete Poetry fulfills that wish for the first time. This volume collects two important pieces: Queen Mab and The Esdaile Notebook. ... The poems are presented as Shelley intended, with textual variants included in footnotes. Following the poems are extensive discussions of the circumstances of their composition and the influences they reflect; their publication or circulation by other means; their reception at the time of publication and in the decades since; their re-publication, both authorized and unauthorized; and their place in Shelley's intellectual and aesthetic development. --Johns Hopkins University Press.