This exploration of how people came to appreciate numbers traces the ways in which early humans gradually evolved methods for recording numerical data and performing simple calculations. Its profiles of ancient systems of recording numbers include Egyptian, Maya and Aztec, Chinese, Greek, and the techniques of other cultures. 1974 edition.

Mr. Ruche, a Parisian bookseller, receives a bequest from a long lost friend in the Amazon of a vast library of math books, which propels him into a great exploration of the story of mathematics. Meanwhile Max, whose family lives with Mr. Ruche, takes in a voluble parrot who will discuss math with anyone. When Mr. Ruche learns of his friend's mysterious death in a Brazilian rainforest, he decides that with the parrot's help he will use these books to teach Max and his brother and sister the mysteries of Euclid's Elements, Pythagoras's Theorem and the countless other mathematical wonders. But soon it becomes clear that Mr. Ruche has inherited the library for reasons other than enlightenment, and before he knows it the household is racing to prevent the parrot and vital, new theorems from falling into the wrong hands. An immediate bestseller when first published in France, The Parrot's Theorem charmingly combines a straightforward history of mathematics and a first-rate murder mystery.

On 9 June 2003, a 43-year-old coloured man named Magadien Wentzel walked out of Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town. Behind him lay a lifelong career in the 28s, South Africa's oldest and most reviled prison gang, for decades rumoured to have specialised in rape and robbery. In front of him lay the prospect of a law-abiding future, and life in a household of eight adults and six children, none of whom earned a living. Jonny Steinberg met Wentzel in prison in the dying months of 2002. By the time Wentzel was released, he and Steinberg had spent more than 50 hours discussing his life experiences. The Number is an account of their conversations and of Steinberg's journeys to the places and people of Wentzel's past. Wentzel had lived a bewilderingly schizophrenic life, wandering to and fro between three worlds: the arcane universe of prison gangs, steeped in a mythology of banditry and retribution, where he was known as JR; the fringes of South Africa's criminal economy, where he lived by a string of stolen names and learned the arts of commercial fraud; and his scattered family which eked out a living int the coloured ghettos of the Cape flats. The Number visits each of those worlds in turn. It is a tale of modern South Africa's historic events seen through the eyes of the country's underclass. Surprisingly, perhaps, it is neither a story of passivity nor despair, but of beguiling ingenuity and cool cynicism. Most of all, the book is an account of memory and identity, of Wentzel's project to make some sense of his bewildering past and something worthy of his future. When Steinberg met him, Wentzel was embarking on a quest to retrieve the name he had been given at birth. He was also beginning the daunting task of gathering together the estranged children he had sired into a nuclear family. It was an eccentric and painful venture for a man with his past, but it has led him to construct an account of himself that begs to be told.

An introduction to the philosophy of mathematics grounded in mathematics and motivated by mathematical inquiry and practice. In this book, Joel David Hamkins offers an introduction to the philosophy of mathematics that is grounded in mathematics and motivated by mathematical inquiry and practice. He treats philosophical issues as they arise organically in mathematics, discussing such topics as platonism, realism, logicism, structuralism, formalism, infinity, and intuitionism in mathematical contexts. He organizes the book by mathematical themes--numbers, rigor, geometry, proof, computability, incompleteness, and set theory--that give rise again and again to philosophical considerations.

In 1202, a 32-year old Italian finished one of the most influential books of all time, which introduced modern arithmetic to Western Europe. Devised in India in the seventh and eighth centuries and brought to North Africa by Muslim traders, the Hindu-Arabic system helped transform the West into the dominant force in science, technology, and commerce, leaving behind Muslim cultures which had long known it but had failed to see its potential. The young Italian, Leonardo of Pisa (better known today as Fibonacci), had learned the Hindu number system when he traveled to North Africa with his father, a customs agent. The book he created was Liber abbaci, the 'Book of Calculation', and the revolution that followed its publication was enormous. Arithmetic made it possible for ordinary people to buy and sell goods, convert currencies, and keep accurate records of possessions more readily than ever before. Liber abbaci's publication led directly to large-scale international commerce and the scientific revolution of the Renaissance. Yet despite the ubiquity of his discoveries, Leonardo of Pisa remains an enigma. His name is best known today in association with an exercise in Liber abbaci whose solution gives rise to a sequence of numbers - the Fibonacci sequence - used by some to predict the rise and fall of financial markets, and evident in myriad biological structures. In The Man of Numbers, Keith Devlin recreates the life and enduring legacy of an overlooked genius, and in the process makes clear how central numbers and mathematics are to our daily lives.

Apocalypsis is a Kabbalistic book, par excellence, far older than Christianity. The author of Apocalypsis is no other than Oannes, the Chaldean Dagon or Man-Fish, who rose every day from the Persian Gulf and taught wisdom to men. As the sun sunk below the horizon, he retired into the sea passing the night in the deep for he was amphibious, i.e., he lived on two planes: the spiritual and the physical. The Gnostic Oannes-John and the Hindu Vishnu are one and the same, personifications of Microcosm, the Inner Man. The numerical value of words, known as Isopsephia, is a branch of the ancient sacerdotal language. Words or phrases that share the same numerical value also share the same spiritual significance. Isopsephia was taught in the Lesser Mysteries but the language itself was reserved for high initiates alone. When good and evil come to an equilibrium in the scales of human actions, 666 million men will have “Supreme Wisdom” incarnated in them. The Christian application of the compound name Jesus-Christ is based on Gnostic and Eastern Mysticism. St. John’s Apocalypsis has been written in the mystery language of the ancient Tannaïm, a relic of Egyptian and Chaldean Wisdom. The Tannaïm were Initiates from whom the wisdom of the Kabbalah was obtained by the later Talmudists. Number 6 was the symbol of our globe, ready to be animated by divine spirit. Figure 6 stands for the Earth in autumn and winter; figure 7, the Central Informing Force, in spring and summer. The ancients divided our globe into 60 degrees, which, multiplied by 60, became 3,600, the Great Year. Hence also the hour, with its 60 minutes of 60 seconds each. Number 6 has now completed the Earth, a globe with a cross over it. Number 7 is the festival day of the Earth and birthday of our world. It represents the seven principles throughout Kosmos, Nature, and Man. The Monad has to pass through its mineral, vegetable and animal forms, before the Light of Logos is awakened in animal man. Till then, the animal form cannot be referred to as a thinking man but has to be regarded as a Monad imprisoned in ever-changing forms. 666 is the isopsephic value of the mind in animal man, devoid of any noetic element. 666 stands for the physical man of the late Third (Lemurian) to early Fourth (Atlantean) Root-Races. This is the very “beast” of the Revelation and Plutarch’s “Eight Race” man. The isopsephic value of Plato’s word for the Lower Mind (Η Φρην) is also 666, suggesting that the Higher Mind is dormant. A hint for Masons: learn to multiply 333, and you may strike 666 instead. Cosmogenesis and Anthropogenesis numerically and geometrically expressed. The One attracts within itself the Divine Unity of the One Circle and forms out of It the Perfect Square, thus “squaring the circle.” The Great Circle or Ring Pass-Not is the “Rope of the Angels” hedging off the phenomenal from the noumenal Kosmos. That Circle is the Universal Principle which, from any given point, expands to embrace all things, while embodying the potentiality of every action in Kosmos. How does the Triangle become the Square? How does the Square become the Six-faced Cube? How does the Triad becomes a Tetrad, the Pythagorean Perfect Square in heaven, and a Cube on earth? Mathematically expressed, Logos become Tetragrammaton, i.e., the Three become Four. When the Spiritual Ego, the holy number 7, germ and matrix of the 6, enters the animal body, the 6 faces of the cube unfold, thus forming the cross of passions upon which material man (Chrēstos) crucifies himself and disappoints his glorious Spirit (Christos). Kabbalistic interpretation of the “crucifixion nails” reveals their sexual meaning. The occult meaning of the Svastika, emblem of the activity of Fohat, symbolised by the figure 6 and the Sacred Four, explained.26 Number 7, being the compound of 6 + 1, is the Number of numbers. Metaphysically, number 7 is the ever invisible centre, the spirit of everything, as there exists no body with six lines constituting its form without a seventh being found as the central point in it — which is the source and origin of the six. Esoterically, number 7 symbolises the secondary “perfection” for it is related only to the manifested planes. Whereas the Greek Delta is the “vehicle of the unknown Deity.” Exoterically, number 3 became the ideograph of the three material elements — air, water, earth; plus number 4, the principle of all that which is neither embodied nor perceptible. But this has never been accepted by the real Pythagoreans. With the Egyptians, number 7 was the symbol of life eternal, and this is why the Greek letter Z, which is but a double 7, is the initial letter of the verb ZΩ (I live) and of Zeus, Father of all living. Interpreted by the Pythagorean Key, the 365 days of a solar year read “The Earth animated by the Spirit of Life.” Number 7 interpreted astronomically, geometrically, and sexually. Astronomically, number 7 is closely connected with the Atlantides who have become the Seven Pleiades. The two are connected with the destinies of nations, as shaped by past events according to Karmic law. Kartikeya-Mars, the occult symbol of the cycle of Naros, is composed of 600, 666, and 777 years. Esoterically, number 7 is symbolised by two interlaced triangles, forming a six-pointed star around a central point. For Seven is the germ of the six and their matrix. In the old Sanskrit works number 6 is mentioned more often than 7, the central position of which is implied by the point that had produced the first line. Geometrically, 7 is the number of the spiritual man, symbolised by the cube unfolding as “cross.” Deity in Man is symbolised by the Tau cross, a double glyph. Tau is formed from the figure 7 and the Greek letter Γ, symbols of divine and earthly life, respectively. In its terrestrial attachment, Tau is the Sun shorn of his beams. The days of the solar year correspond with the 7 principles of psychic man, and the 7 aspects of the physical man. The sexual meaning of the crucifixion nails, when numerically interpreted, explain how number 6 became 7. The position of the three nails into the crucified’s extremities and on the cross, form the corners of a triangle facing down. The three nails with the three wounds are in number 6, which denotes the 6 faces of the cube when unfolded. When the feet are separated, the three wounds become four, forming a square, and thus the number of the crucified (3 + 4) become 7, a most holy number. And when 3 and 4 kiss each other, they form the Procrustean bed of torture where Prometheus is crucified. While 7 is the feminine number of pristine purity, 9 is the number of the phallic or male energy. But the Jews made of number 7 a feminine number of generation, thus introducing the phallic element into religion. 777 is the isopsephic value of the Cross (Σταυρος) and symbol of the Kosmic Man. Radiating from a Pyramid of Heavenly Stars, 777 enlightens the inferior worlds. The mundane cross is the oldest phallic symbol of the dual generative power, not the instrument of the alleged crucifixion. Jesus was crucified by his own Church, not by Scripture. Christos is the Man-God of Plato, who crucifies himself for an eternity in the darkness of matter, in order to redeem the Spirit of Truth from the clutches of untruth and self-deceit. The Fathers have falsified Jesus’ last words and made him a victim of his own success. The paronomastic terms Chrēstos and Christos are linked astrologically — a double pun. Scorpio is Chrēstos in humiliation; Leo, Christos in triumph. Christos is the eternal, real Individuality, or universal Altruism; whereas Jesus-Chrēstos is the mortal man who, by crucifying the man of flesh and his passions on the Procrustean bed of torture, is reborn Immortal and leaves the animal-man behind him tied on the Cross of Initiation like an empty chrysalis. Then, his Higher Soul becomes as free as a butterfly. Christos is the God in Space and Man’s Saviour on Earth. What is the meaning of Moses beseeching the Lord to show him “his glory”? A grotesque verse from Exodus interpreted esoterically. Why Moses and Jehovah are in numerical harmony? Because the number of Moses is that of “I am, That I am,” i.e., 345. The number of Jehovah is 543, the reverse of 345. Number 8 symbolises the regular Kosmic breathing overseen by eight gods. Number 8 also symbolises the equality of units, order and symmetry in heaven, transformed into inequality and confusion on earth by man’s intense selfishness and rebellion against Nature’s decrees. If number 6 was the symbol of our globe ready to be animated by a divine spirit, number 9 is the symbol of our globe informed by an evil spirit. 888 is the Gnostic and Kabbalistic number of Jesus (Ιησους), and also the tripartite division of a solar day. When the “back parts” of Moses and his “face” are added up we have 888, which is the Gnostic-Kabbalistic name of Jesus. The main purpose of this system of number checks was to preserve in perpetuity the exact value of the Lunar Year in the natural measure of days. The Semites seem to have had no higher purpose in life than that of procreating their species. Jewish Deity is proved to be, at best, only the manifested duad, never the One Absolute ALL. The Jews had no aspirations towards the Ideal.

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

Nearly 30 years ago, John Horton Conway introduced a new way to construct numbers. Donald E. Knuth, in appreciation of this revolutionary system, took a week off from work on The Art of Computer Programming to write an introduction to Conway's method. Never content with the ordinary, Knuth wrote this introduction as a work of fiction--a novelette. If not a steamy romance, the book nonetheless shows how a young couple turned on to pure mathematics and found total happiness. The book's primary aim, Knuth explains in a postscript, is not so much to teach Conway's theory as "to teach how one might go about developing such a theory." He continues: "Therefore, as the two characters in this book gradually explore and build up Conway's number system, I have recorded their false starts and frustrations as well as their good ideas. I wanted to give a reasonably faithful portrayal of the important principles, techniques, joys, passions, and philosophy of mathematics, so I wrote the story as I was actually doing the research myself."... It is an astonishing feat of legerdemain. An empty hat rests on a table made of a few axioms of standard set theory. Conway waves two simple rules in the air, then reaches into almost nothing and pulls out an infinitely rich tapestry of numbers that form a real and closed field. Every real number is surrounded by a host of new numbers that lie closer to it than any other "real" value does. The system is truly "surreal." quoted from Martin Gardner, Mathematical Magic Show, pp. 16--19 Surreal Numbers, now in its 13th printing, will appeal to anyone who might enjoy an engaging dialogue on abstract mathematical ideas, and who might wish to experience how new mathematics is created. 0201038129B04062001

In this book Mohammed, the founder of the Islam faith, and the spirit of Islam is shown to be the man the Scriptures refers to as "The Man Whose Number is 666." This is not the first book to state this but it may well be the only one in this modern era to show from a historical perspective and the modern resurgence of the Islam faith which has united with world-wide terrorism to fulfill the Biblical picture of this man. I will leave it to the reader to decide to what degree I have succeeded. You will not put this book down until you have decided whether Mohammed truly completes the picture of this man whose number is 666.

The bestselling workbook and grammar guide, revised and updated! Hailed as one of the best books around for teaching grammar, The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation includes easy-to-understand rules, abundant examples, dozens of reproducible quizzes, and pre- and post-tests to help teach grammar to middle and high schoolers, college students, ESL students, homeschoolers, and more. This concise, entertaining workbook makes learning English grammar and usage simple and fun. This updated 12th edition reflects the latest updates to English usage and grammar, and includes answers to all reproducible quizzes to facilitate self-assessment and learning. Clear and concise, with easy-to-follow explanations, offering "just the facts" on English grammar, punctuation, and usage Fully updated to reflect the latest rules, along with even more quizzes and pre- and post-tests to help teach grammar Ideal for students from seventh grade through adulthood in the US and abroad For anyone who wants to understand the major rules and subtle guidelines of English grammar and usage, The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation offers comprehensive, straightforward instruction.