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MATHEMATICS IN ANCIENT IRAQ: A SOCIAL HISTORY by Eleanor Robson Princeton University Press, 2008, 441 pp. ISBN: 978-0-691-09182-2
A comprehensive, accessible survey of Mesopotamian mathematics has been long overdue. The last such work was Otto Neugebauer's The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (1957). The perfect successor to Neugebauer's book, Eleanor Robson' s Mathematics in Ancient Iraq: A Social History is readable, accessible as history and as mathematics, and provides the nonspecialist reader with up-to-date information on Mesopotamian mathematics and the historiography of the history of mathematics in the Middle East.
Robson sets the tone for the book in the first chapter, in which she defines the scope of her text, the methods she has used in preparing it, and the sources from which she draws. Robson, following recent trends in research in the history of mathematics, advocates an approach that considers archeological, textual, linguistics, and cultural data in addition to the mathematical data. She sees the mathematics of ancient Iraq as culturally situated. Mathematics is a part of and co-evolves with the Mesopotamian cultures. Robson has an encyclopedic knowledge of mathematical cuneiform texts as well as cuneiform texts of a historical, economic, and literary nature. AU these sources of information are woven together into a compelling story about mathematics and culture.
The next seven chapters...