194. Empire of Numbers: Fibonacci and the Birth of Modern Money
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Oct 14, 2024
Explore the remarkable journey of numerical ideas from India to medieval Spain. The podcast highlights how Toledo became a melting pot for cultures, fostering intellectual exchange among Arabs, Jews, and Christians. It dives into Fibonacci's transformative impact on mathematics with his work, Liber Abaci, which revolutionized the European number system. Discover the fascinating interplay of translations that laid the groundwork for modern economic practices and the Renaissance's merging of mathematics and art.
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Peaceful Transfer of Toledo
King Alfonso VI of León peacefully took Toledo from the Arabs in 1085.
He promised to respect Muslim privileges and the main mosque, a key moment for cultural exchange.
insights INSIGHT
Toledo as a Bridgehead of Knowledge
Toledo became a bridgehead of knowledge between Islamic and Christian worlds.
Scholars flocked to Toledo, translating Arabic texts, including lost Greek classics.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Gerard of Cremona's Translations
Gerard of Cremona, arriving in Toledo mid-winter, learned Arabic with the help of Ghalib the Mozarab.
Together they translated around 88 Arabic works into Latin via Castilian.
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Published in 1202, Liber Abaci is a Latin work on arithmetic by Leonardo of Pisa, known as Fibonacci. The book is famous for introducing the base-10 positional notation and the symbols known as Arabic numerals in Europe. It is divided into four sections: the first introduces the Hindu-Arabic numeral system and methods for converting between different representation systems; the second presents examples from commerce such as currency conversions and calculations of profit and interest; the third discusses various mathematical problems including the Chinese remainder theorem and the Fibonacci sequence; and the fourth derives approximations of irrational numbers such as square roots. The book played a crucial role in promoting the superiority of the new numeral system among tradesmen and mathematicians[2][4][5].
When King Alfonso VI of León took Toledo from the Arabs in 1085, the history of western christendom changed forever. Within the city existed a number of texts full of the ideas that we would call Arabic numerals, but that originated in India. From the libraries of Toledo these were translated and spread through Europe. Enter Fibonacci. A genius Italian mathematician, he instantly recognised the advantages of this number system and so wrote Liber Abaci, distilling these ancient ideas into a Latin text. Once this caught on, it laid the foundation for the modern banking and economic system that underpins the global economy.
Listen as William and Anita discuss how numerical ideas that originated in India came to prevail across the world.
To buy William's book: https://coles-books.co.uk/the-golden-road-by-william-dalrymple-signed-edition
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