 previous article in this issue | next article in this issue  |
Preview first page |
Document Details : Title: Tra Archimede e Descartes Subtitle: Le 24 potenze di P.Vindob. G 27574 Author(s): MORELLI, Federico Journal: Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists Volume: 58 Date: 2021 Pages: 33-52 DOI: 10.2143/BASP.58.0.3289945 Abstract : This seventh- (or eighth-) century papyrus lists a series of powers of 2, up to the 24th power. The exponential growth of the results, from 2 to 16,777,216, is accompanied by numerical exponents – from the 12th power on noted as ordinal numbers –, which anticipate the modern notation system of powers adopted by Descartes in 1637. I briefly outline the history of the use, and above all of the notation, of powers from antiquity to modern times: something similar to our text can be found for the first time in Michael Stifel’s Arithmetica integra, from 1544. The papyrus is part of a different tradition from the one better known and for a long time prevalent, which is based on geometric concepts such as square, cube, square of the square, etc. It is a parallel and underground tradition, based on purely numerical concepts that has left very few traces in the sources. Fatal error: Uncaught mysqli_sql_exception: Column 'lib_id' cannot be null in /srv/data/web/vhosts/poj.peeters-leuven.be/htdocs/secure/POJ/tracker2.php:212 Stack trace: #0 /srv/data/web/vhosts/poj.peeters-leuven.be/htdocs/secure/POJ/tracker2.php(212): mysqli_query() #1 /srv/data/web/vhosts/poj.peeters-leuven.be/htdocs/article.php(579): track2_page_hit() #2 /srv/data/web/vhosts/poj.peeters-leuven.be/htdocs/content.php(636): include('...') #3 {main} thrown in /srv/data/web/vhosts/poj.peeters-leuven.be/htdocs/secure/POJ/tracker2.php on line 212 |