Philosophical Questions

[Zzzptm]

Sounds almost as futile as discussing foundational ethics with cats.

[Vyn]

I just started reading Sigler's 2002 English translation of the Liber Abaci and have a random observation: Leonardo Pisano (among other names, ultimately given the moniker "Fibonacci" even though that wasn't his name) drew up a document in Latin called Liber Abaci. In 1202 A.D.

There aren't any copies of that known to exist (maybe one is hidden in a false drawer somewhere in the Vatican's library) but we do have the second publication that he wrote in 1208.

Liber Abaci translates into English as "Book of Calculation". It is universally considered a landmark publication in maths, and has since it was first unleashed on the public in 1202. This is the important bit.

Obviously, that text was not "printed" as a book at the time, given the printing press hadn't been invented yet. In fact, the first time that Liber Abaci was printed as a book was in 1857.

It was first translated into English in...2002.

The observation I have is that for a text that has such import, how is it that its availability has been so thin?

By the way, one of the things that makes it such an important work is that it introduced the Hindu-Arabic numeration symbols to the "western" world. Fibby polished it a bit, but it was the channel by which our numbers 0-9 came to us. There are other things as well - most of it consists of word problems, amazingly enough.

[Zzzptm]

No Kindle version available, nuts... But, yes, did everyone just rave about it without having read it?

[Vyn]

Haha, seems like it. I've first learned about it in college, but there wasn't an English version at that time. A French, an Italian, and about twelve copies of the original (well, the second printing) in various states of decay, held by various museums/libraries around the world. That was it. For various reasons I looked into recently, and discovered the English version, so Amazon hooked me up.

[Zzzptm]

Possible explanation... math textbook publishers formed a cartel and blocked public-domain competition to their sweet academic gravy train that they had going on.

[Vyn]

Maybe there was a scribe strike and by the time movable type was invented everyone forgot about poor Fibby's magnum opus until some Italian dude in the mid 19th century lol