Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.37

c13.37

The Arabian Algebraists are still more sparing of symbols, or rather entirely destitute of them.57 They have none, whether arbitrary or abbreviated, either for quantities known or unknown, positive or negative, or for the steps and operations of an algebraic process: but express every thing by words, and phrases, at full length. Their European scholars introduced a few and very few abbreviations of names: c°, cᵉ, cᵘ, for the three first powers; c°, q², for the first and second unknown quantities; p, m, for plus and minus; and R* for the note of radicality; occur in the first printed work which is that of Paciolo.58 Leonardo Bonacci of *Pisa*, the earliest scholar of the Arabians,59 is said by Targioni Tozzetti to have used the small letters of the alphabet to denote quantities.60 But Leonardo only does so because he represents quantities by straight lines, and designates those lines by letters, in elucidation of his Algebraic solutions of problems.⁶¹