Although our contemporary knowledge of brother Adam is lacking, this paper sets out to analyse the letter and to reconstruct the individual fragments of teachings which had to be available to the recipient of the letter (i.e. Gerbert's text deals with the problems of timekeeping and it naturally uses professional astronomical and geographical terminology and concepts which were necessary for timekeeping during this period. This paper focuses on the letter, written by Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II) in the late 980s, which was addressed to brother Adam who is otherwise unknown to us from other sources. Letter on Timekeeping of Gerbert of Aurillac to Brother Adam. As a result, this focus also contributes to dissolving traditional disciplinary gaps, especially the opposition between the history of science, which traditionally deals with the history of numerical knowledge, and historical branches of the humanities, which handle semantic and narrative phenomena. Thus, the approach allows for an exploration of how these varying phenomenons of number incorporate different kinds of semantic saturation that derive from the various fields of its use. In doing so, the article focuses on the phenomenality of number-i.e., number as a spoken counting word (B.) as a graphic figure carved in wood or written on parchment (B.) as a formal pattern that organizes books and memory (C.) as a verbal expression for the documentation of quantities (D.) as a manual or symbolic instrument of calculation (E.) as a formally structured multitude determined by arithmetic properties (F.), which as symbolic carriers organize interpretation processes as well as the production of texts and works of art (G.). I begin with the act of counting and the notation of numbers (B) move from the role of numerals in medieval writing practices (C.) to the practices of measuring (D.) and calculating (E.) and close with comments on medieval theory building (F.), on speculative interpretations of numbers (G.), and with a short conclusion (H.). It focuses on the forms of use that were developed for dealing with numbers. This article outlines a history of numerical knowledge. ![]() This text focuses on the detailed description and analysis of the individual parts of the abacus (columns, arcs etc.) and furthermore presents and explains additional mathematical informations emerging in the mentioned images of the abacuses in manuscripts (for example abacistic symbols and names of numerals, markings of the abacus columns and symbols of fractions and relations between them). The emphasis of this paper is given to the reconstruction of the form of this arithmetical tool according surviving images of this instrument as well as mutual comparisons of them together. According two descriptions of the abacus written around the year 1000 (one from the third book of the “History” written by Richer of Reims and the other from the first book of the “Liber Abaci” written by Bernelius the younger from Paris) and mainly according nine images of the calculating tool preserved in manuscripts from the end of the 10th to the beginning of the 12th centuries (so called abacus from Echternach and the abacus from Bern – either from the end of 10th century the abacus from Paris from the beginning of 11th century abacus from so called pseudo-Boethius’s the “Geometry II” from the half of 11th century the abacus from Vatican, the abacus from Rouen and the abacus from Paris – all of these from the 11th century, the abacus from Oxford from the beginning of 12th century and so called abacus of Abbo of Fleury) this article presents in detail this arithmetic tool. This paper deals with the abacus of the Latin pre-scholastic Middle Ages.
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