| Abstract: | Gerbert of Aurillac, a noted tenth-century scholar, churchman and politician, studied mathematics, because, as he once said, it curbed the impulses] of tumultuous minds. Mathematics taught that the world of physical reality was an orderly arrangement of structures, of parts fitting together into wholes. Gerbert appears to have sincerely believe such a thing, for his mathematics was closely elected to God and His work. It was a metaphorical representation of God and thus possessed religious sanction. Its method of abstracting from physical reality trained the mind to see in this world the reflection of God Himself and His spiritual world, where peace, harmony and unity were the commanding principles. There everything was extensive and equal. In the midst of violence, would not these ideas appear particularly attractive? Men like Gerbert, who were concerned with the violence of their time, saw in these ideas, long embodied in various traditions, hopes for the future. |
