‘Enlightening Symbols’ shows how math’s language arose

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/enlightening-symbols-shows-how-maths-
language-arose

Enlightening Symbols

Joseph Mazur
Princeton Univ., $29.95
As the semanticist S.I. Hayakawa stressed in his classic book Language in Thought
and Action, words are not the things they represent. Words are symbols. It’s the
manipulation of those symbols that makes communication possible.

In very much the same way, it’s the manipulation of symbols of a different type that
makes mathematics practical. You can describe mathematical operations using just
words — in fact, in ancient times, that was the norm. But such a cumbersome
approach is not conducive to anything very complicated. In large part, the advance of
mathematics from simple arithmetic to the complexities of algebra and calculus was
made possible by the development of effective symbols.

Mazur relates the stories behind those symbols engagingly, if a bit unevenly. He
offers a wealth of historical depth in several chapters devoted to Arabic numerals. He
traces in detail the evolution of symbols in algebraic equations and the various
attempts to find convenient representations of roots and powers.

But he only briefly treats common symbols such as those for division, multiplication,
equality and infinity. And the closing chapters veer off into the philosophy of symbols
and the neuroscience behind how the brain reacts to them. Still, Enlightening
Symbols is basically an intriguing if quirky history of mathematics itself, as told
through the story of the symbols invented to facilitate it.

It’s an interesting and informative book, especially valuable for its attention to recent
scholarship that revises some traditional historical beliefs. It suffers, though, from
poor editing. We learn that Thomas Hobbes called the use of symbols “a double
labor of the mind” in a passage on page 164, then again in a largely duplicated
passage on pages 180–181. We learn that Nicole Oresme anticipated Descartes’
idea of coordinate systems on page 152, then again on page 154. More attention to
such repetitions would have made a good book much better.
Mathematical languages like Algebra and Calculus are one of the most advance
methods that are used for solving for any effective symbols. The algebraic equations
played a big role in finding the evolution of symbols to find the representation of roots
and powers. Division, multiplication, equality and infinity are used to find the
Enlightening Symbols but it is really a complicated one to solve. It takes years to
master that certain discovery and gather necessary information in steps. In our
present generation of today, we can see mathematics in our environment and
community. It is therefore useful in every field and profession since mathematics is
important in our life whether it is advance or basic lessons. The influence of
mathematics leads us to a new revolutionary future and people will become more
intelligent just like an AI.