Description

"Das macht nach Adam Ries …" [According to [Edward] Cocker …] – even today, people in Germany use this phrase to confirm that their calculations are correct. While Germany’s greatest arithmetician, who lived most of his life in Annaberg, Saxony, didn’t invent arithmetic, nor did he introduce Indian-Arabic digits, he did methodically present access to arithmetic knowledge and publish it in arithmetic textbooks, making written arithmetic much easier to understand and comprehend for everyone.

But what was it like in the time before Adam Ries? Throughout the Middle Ages, most people hardly used any arithmetic methods at all — not even the simplest ones. The amount of calculations that could be performed in everyday life was limited. Such calculations quickly became empirical knowledge; otherwise, there were fingers, tally sticks, knotted strings, and other tools to solve a problem or document the result.

This changed dramatically when trade and crafts began to flourish, integrating Saxony into larger spatial contexts. The more diverse tasks also required better education, but there was still a long way to go before every man, or even every woman, learned to read, write, and calculate in school. In the meantime, laypeople — for example, merchants, pharmacists, or craftsmen — who had taught themselves something or had spent time in more progressive Italy, helped to solve problems for their fellow citizens for payment as part-time or full-time arithmetic masters. The art of arithmetic was not limited to “pure” mathematics, but primarily encompassed practical applications such as measuring areas and volumes, calculating interest, dividing an inheritance, bookkeeping, or, indeed, teaching children.

All of this is presented in detail in this book, and it shows not only how exciting, strenuous, and necessary arithmetic was — for example, to avoid being cheated — but also how, with the Reformation, the elementary school-system was established in Saxony, which has since taught the necessary arithmetic knowledge.

2025, 224 pages, Hardover, 42 ill. (b/w), 15 x 22 cm;
ISBN: 978-3-938533-86-4