Development of mathematics in Europe Mathematics flourished in the Greek world

from 600 b.c. to a.d. 300 in what has been called the Golden Age of Mathematics.
The rise of the Roman Empire saw mathematical philosophy take a back seat to
practical methods, since the Romans, in general, preferred language studies to
abstract mathematics, but Greek learning was still preserved and studied. With the
fall of Rome and the collapse of the empire in the fourth century, however, many
ancient mathematical works were lost or destroyed. Europe endured a period of
anarchy and political fragmentation. Trade became localized, and towns and cities
shrank in importance and size. These economic and political changes all reduced the
role of mathematics in society. What little knowledge from the ancient world remained
was preserved in the Byzantine Empire (roughly modern-day Turkey), or in
monasteries scattered across Europe where they were stored and copied over the
centuries. While the Byzantine Empire used little of this knowledge themselves, they
shared it with neighboring Arab lands; in this way, much of Greek learning was
translated into Arabic. In order to preserve these ancient texts over many centuries
as parchment aged and crumbled, frequent copies had to be made. In Europe monks
tended to concentrate their efforts on theological and philosophical texts, not
mathematical or scientific ones; as a result, many great works literally crumbled into
dust. Scholars came to rely on a small selection of Latin texts, many compiled into
large encyclopedias in the fifth and sixth centuries by scholars such as Boethius
(480-524). These large collections simplified complicated concepts for the European
audience, which often meant deleting mathematical figures and calculations. In
addition, medieval writers frequently did not use numbers, so even books on
technical subjects such as glassmaking and jewelry tended to contain nonspecific
quantities, such as "a medium-sized piece" or "a bit more." This kind of simplification
was necessary because education in the Middle Ages contained almost no higher
mathematics. Although arithmetic was taught as part of the seven liberal arts—the
quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) and the trivium, (grammar,
rhetoric, and dialectic)—it was merely the theory of numbers, not the calculation of
problems we associate with the subject today. Medieval mathematicians focused on
basic properties, such as odd and even numbers, ratios, proportions, and the
harmony of numbers. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division were separate
subjects, collectively called computus, which were rarely taught. Furthermore, the
chaotic political and economic situation in Europe, combined with the preference for
religious and philosophical texts, severely limited the scope and application of
mathematical ideas in medieval society. Mathematical computation was restricted to
that needed for the small-scale trade of the era. Over time, however, the economic
and political stability of Europe began to improve, and mathematics slowly revived to
meet the needs of the changing society. One of the major factors in medieval life was
the church. The Christian tradition was ambivalent toward numbers. Parts of the
Bible seemed to support mathematics, such as the use of apocalyptic numbers in
Daniel and Revelation. However, there were also some sections that appeared
hostile. An abbot in 1130 stopped his men counting their provisions to see if they
would survive an impending crisis, as this would suggest they did not trust God to
see them safely through. He referred them to the biblical story of King David, who
was punished for counting the people in his kingdom. was reentering medieval life
apace. New translations recovered much that had been lost a thousand years before,
and new ideas were discovered in Arabic and Hindu scholarship. The abacus helped
revive the art of calculation, and the teaching of mathematics was being demanded
by many sectors of medieval society. However, the growth of the economy and of
urban centers was dramatically interrupted in the fourteenth century, with wars and
the Black Death killing as much as one third of the European population, and stunting
the intellectual revival. Yet the impulses that had begun the revival of mathematics
still remained, and with a new period of relative peace and stability from the mid-
fifteenth century mathematics once again flourished. Mathematics spread into more
fields, such as the application of geometry in painting to produce perspective. The
development of printing ensured that ancient learning could no longer be lost through
lack of copies. The mathematicians of the Renaissance would later help forge the
way for the eventual marriage of mathematics and science; one of the fundamental
characteristics of the modern age