Posted on 07/07/2011 9:17:30 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
For popular historians, there is a constant tension between patching up a holey narrative and honoring a commitment to the facts, as rickety as these often are. Perhaps authors of historical fiction have an easier time of it; they use facts as the yeast to grow fully formed characters, convincing dialogue and a credible story line. We are eager partners in these literary deceptions, for the opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with Renault's Alexander or Graves's Claudius. Nonfiction historians are hogtied; no amount of speculative verbiage can truly fill an absence of facts. Such is the case with Fibonacci and countless others, reduced to ciphers by the passage of time. Civilization advances through their incremental contributions to science, technology and the arts. And as Mr. Devlin reminds us, even something as prosaic as a sequence of 10 numbers can remake an entire world.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Their 'Blueprints' (aka: construction drawings) and buildings all had to be in whole numbers. And in my 45 years in Drafting and Engineering, and 41 years in the Commercial Construction 'bidness', I've never seen it.
Granted expecting something to actually be constructed to an 1/8" of inch is a bit much in 'the real world', but none the less that's how Architects and Structural Engineers have it on their design drawings (Blueprints).
And believe it or not, but sometimes - and getting more common now - us in the construction trades fight over 1/2" of space above the ceiling to install our work.
'Way back when' we joked that 'it wasn't Rocket Science'. Well... the tolerances are getting there as the taller a building is per floor height, the more it costs the owner. And those costs now are 'HUGH'.
That’s okay. 29 is never IXXX either. It’s always XXIX.
Hummus with that?
For that matter, why not IIIII instead of V? And wny not VV instead of X?
I don’t know it, but hummus a few bars and I’ll fake it.
The Romans also used a lot of concrete. For that matter, I agree with those who say the Egyptians used yet another form of concrete to build the Giza pyramids.
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/davidovits/index
We should remember that what we call Roman numerals were called by the Romans, numerals. ;’) [insert Chinese food joke here]
Number systems were often peculiar to a town or an area; the Sumerians never had a single system for recording numbers, but rather used locally developed systems. Perhaps this shows how writing systems in general formed, and how recordkeeping only became abstract after abstract thinking had an interface and humans a way of expressing their abstractions.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2527412/posts?page=45#45
numbers in Linear A:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1173901/posts?page=13#13
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1202723/posts?page=10#10
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1289143/posts?page=12#12
other:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2658658/posts?page=22#22
I just got up a while ago and I 'ain't' clicking on all cylinders yet.
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