Number: From Prehistoric Times to the Computer Age

Periodically mathematicians dress up the dog in the attempt to convince the public that mathematics has human charms. MacLeish, an emeritus professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, chose a sort of ``comparative math'' format: the ability to calculate has always been crucial to developing civilizations (10 of which he discusses here, from the ``Amerinds'' east to India). But he's no Joseph Campbell, and the invention of zero is not likely to become a conversation-starter in singles bars. Even the arcane Mayan base-20 number system seems to dry up in his hands: ``Lacking proper historical records, students of Mayan culture necessarily become caught up in study of the calendar and the numbers.'' Halfway through the book, MacLeish gives up the ethnographic model and swerves down the familiar ``great men'' approach--Francis Bacon, John Napier et al.--to calculus, Boolean algebra and computing, and here he succeeds in making model presentations, albeit in a stilted lecture style. Morris Kline's Mathematical Thought in Ancient Times remains the standard history of the culture of mathematics. (Oct.)