Exactly. And while the Romans did attack finicky problems in engineering, the solutions were more often practical trial and error results that would be replicated rather than general solutions. Though that is getting a little outside my area.
They were pretty great at accounting, though, and Roman Numerals are very well suited to addition and subtraction whether the numbers involved are large or small. So you could keep track of how many soldiers you lost quite precisely, and could add up the remaining soldiers in a territory easily enough.
For problems like, how much grain can we store in a silo of particular dimensions? They were less prone to abstractions about that sort of thing than, say, Egyptian mathematicians. As far as surviving documents go, anyway.
Notice the black smudge on the mushroom cloud? That's a battleship, lifted completely out of the water.
The vertical smudge on the right side of the mushroom "stem"?
The vertical smudge on the right side of the mushroom "stem"?
Yeah.
Wow. When I magnified it, I still couldn't make out any detail, so I wasn't sure. Man.
For problems like, how much grain can we store in a silo of particular dimensions? They were less prone to abstractions about that sort of thing than, say, Egyptian mathematicians.
Did you read the book Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea?
Pretty fascinating look at how zero got into mathematics and how and why the Greeks and Romans got along without it.
As you note, Greeks were primarily interested in math for practical applications, particularly portioning land (hence geometry and Pythagoras). Whereas India had a cultural/religious notion of nullity that allowed them to pursue it mathematically.
Zero was actually forbidden by the Pope. Because in a world with God there could be no allowance for nothingness.
Zero was actually forbidden by the Pope.
Another reason why Zero is my hero.
Man, I read a really interesting article on zero in
Atlantic Monthly
in high school.
And here it is!! It's focused mainly on the millennium issue and the absence of Year Zero, Trent Reznor notwithstanding.
Another reason why Zero is my hero.
I'm all about Hey Little Twelvetoes.
Zero was actually forbidden by the Pope.
Oh, I bet this explains why the Catholic Church hated Galileo. My theory is that Galileo just replaced every zero with 'Pope.' So then he says, "The Earth goes around the Sun, which is ninety-three Pope Pope Pope, Pope Pope Pope miles away."
