Yep, Gramma is dropping some goddamn Historical Perspective this week.

It’s all true, by the way — well, except for the vampires part (probably 🙂 ). The Scientific and Industrial Revolutions needed a few different ingredients to be combined in just the right way to make them go. Mass communication was one of ’em — the printing press obviously, improvements in navigation and infrastructure — so that every little mad scientist in the world didn’t have to reinvent the tainted elixir of whatever from scratch. The Islamic world had been able to build on ancient Indian and Greek knowledge, and then Europe was able to build on the golden age of Islamic science.

And there was also maths. Maths was extremely important. If you cannot do your maths quickly and accurately then forget algebra, much less calculus, and basically forget modern physics too. So Renaissance Europe got very, very excited about Arabic numerals (which the Arabs called Hindu numerals, btw, because that’s what they actually were, thanks for confusing me, elementary school teachers). I am totally ganking that last little vignette on the page from what was evidently a not-unpopular woodcut meme of the 16th century: Old and Busted Maths (the counting table and Roman numerals) vs. New Hotness Maths (Hindu-Arabic numerals, now with shiny Zero functionality). Presided over, of course, by a vague-anthropomorphization-type lady. Like you did back then. Because I’m a writer and insane, I am now picturing countless iterations of a typical 16th-century tavern scene, wherein Young Merchant is like scorching Old Merchant with his fancypants smartphone, I mean his Hindu-Arabic numerals, even after a quantity of beer and bragging that shoulda brought down a bull moose. (And these woodcuts are like the macros spreading the good news. NO RLY U GAIZ THESE NUMBERZ ARE THE SHIZZZZ TRY IT!!1!)