Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Money Wisdom #29

"On the most basic level money is linked to number, and one of the significant effects of monetization is the expansion of the place of numerical calculation in everyday life. Isidore of Seville underlined the link between money and number in the Etymologies, when in chapter 3 under the heading "What number is" he wrote: "Nummus (coin) gave its name to numerus (number) and, from being frequently used, originated the word." A similar association of number and coins can be found in the work of Islamic mathematicians where the common unit was called dirham after the name of a common coin."

Joel Kaye Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century p.211 (1998)