(Article II.6.) State, “Justice”, Scribal Culture and Mathematics in Ancient Mesopotamia. Sarton Lecture 2008

Jens Høyrup ()
Additional contact information
Jens Høyrup: Roskilde University, Section for Philosophy and Science Studies

Chapter Chapter 23 in Selected Essays on Pre- and Early Modern Mathematical Practice, 2019, pp 633-660 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The functioning of the modern state presupposes a variety of mathematical technologies – accounting, statistics, and much more. Mathematics, on its part, needs the institutions of the state (schools, universities, research institutions, etc.) to secure financing, recruitment and the rearing of competence. At a given moment, the state as well as mathematics largely take the partner “as it is”, and none of them appears to the immediate view to depend for its essence on the other. At the moment of pristine state formation, the situation was different. Most pristine state structures depended on organized violence, on religious institutions, etc., and mathematics did not enter. At least one major exception to this rule can be found, however: the earliest “proto-literate” state formation in Mesopotamia of the late fourth millennium, intimately connected to a system of accounting that seems to have guaranteed an apparent continuation of pre-state “just redistribution”. Both for its functioning and its legitimization, the state depended on the mathematics of accounting. On its part, the kind of mathematics that was created was totally bound up with its administrative role. The lecture follows the interaction of state, “justice”, mathematics and scribal profession from the late fourth millennium over the “Ur III” period (21st century bce, culmination and apparently end of the intertwinement of statal structure and legitimization with mathematics) until the Assyrian empire of the earlier first millennium.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-19258-7_23

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030192587

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-19258-7_23

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().