Evolution of Mathematics in Civilizational History

Discussion

William Irwin Thompson:

"With the rise of the city and the imperial ceremonial centre, the prehistoric Arithmetic Mentality begins to give way to the new powers of the Geometric Mentality. The Arithmetic Mentality revolved around the Great Mother— the One who became many—and held the power of generation—of creatures and numbers. But to draft plans for ceremonial centres with monumental statuary and imposing fortresses required geometry. This process of transformation is recorded in the Babylonian Enuma Elish, which shows the male war god Marduk tearing apart the body of the Great Mother in order to build the city of Babylon, and it is shown in Aeschylus’s Oresteia, in which the warrior goddess Athena, born from the head of her father Zeus, revokes the power of maternal custom with its avenging furies to build the new power on the written text and the law courts of the city of Athens."

(http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.64.853&rep=rep1&type=pdf)