Author | Luca Pacioli |
---|---|
Language | Italian |
Subjects | Mathematics, Accounting |
Publisher | Paganini (Venice) |
Publication date | 1494 |
Publication place | Republic of Venice |
Pages | 615 pp (first edition) |
Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita (Summary of arithmetic, geometry, proportions and proportionality) is a book on mathematics written by Luca Pacioli and first published in 1494. It contains a comprehensive summary of Renaissance mathematics, including practical arithmetic, basic algebra, basic geometry and accounting, written for use as a textbook and reference work.
Written in vernacular Italian, the Summa is the first printed work on algebra, and it contains the first published description of the double-entry bookkeeping system. It set a new standard for writing and argumentation about algebra, and its impact upon the subsequent development and standardization of professional accounting methods was so great that Pacioli is sometimes referred to as the "father of accounting".
The Summa de arithmetica as originally printed consists of ten chapters on a series of mathematical topics, collectively covering essentially all of Renaissance mathematics. The first seven chapters form a summary of arithmetic in 222 pages. The eighth chapter explains contemporary algebra in 78 pages. The ninth chapter discusses various topics relevant to business and trade, including barter, bills of exchange, weights and measures and bookkeeping, in 150 pages. The tenth and final chapter describes practical geometry (including basic trigonometry) in 151 pages. [1]
The book's mathematical content draws heavily on the traditions of the abacus schools of contemporary northern Italy, where the children of merchants and the middle class studied arithmetic on the model established by Fibonacci's Liber Abaci . The emphasis of this tradition was on facility with computation, using the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, developed through exposure to numerous example problems and case studies drawn principally from business and trade. [2] Pacioli's work likewise teaches through examples, but it also develops arguments for the validity of its solutions through reference to general principles, axioms and logical proof. In this way the Summa begins to reintegrate the logical methods of classical Greek geometry into the medieval discipline of algebra. [3]
Within the chapter on business, a section entitled Particularis de computis et scripturis (Details of calculation and recording) describes the accounting methods then in use among northern-Italian merchants, including double-entry bookkeeping, trial balances, balance sheets and various other tools still employed by professional accountants. [4] The business chapter also introduces the rule of 72 for predicting an investment's future value, anticipating the development of the logarithm by more than century. [5] These techniques did not originate with Pacioli, who merely recorded and explained the established best practices of contemporary businesspeople in his region. [1]
Pacioli explicitly states in the Summa that he contributed no original mathematical content to the work, but he also does not specifically attribute any of the material to other sources. [1] Subsequent scholarship has found that much of the work's coverage of geometry is taken almost exactly from Piero della Francesca’s Trattato d’abaco , one of the algebra sections is based on the Trattato di Fioretti of Antonio de Mazzinghi, and a portion of the business chapter is copied from a manuscript by Giorgio Chiarini. This sort of appropriation has led some historians (notably including sixteenth-century biographer Giorgio Vasari) to accuse Pacioli of plagiarism in the Summa (and other works). Many of the problems and techniques included in the book are quite directly taken from these earlier works, but the Summa generally adds original logical arguments to justify the validity of the methods. [3]
Summa de arithmetica was composed over a period of decades through Pacioli's work as a professor of mathematics, and was probably intended as a textbook and reference work for students of mathematics and business, especially among the mercantile middle class of northern Italy. [1] It was written in vernacular Italian (rather than Latin), reflecting its target audience and its purpose as a teaching text. The work was dedicated to Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, a patron of the arts whom Pacioli had met in Rome some years earlier. [4]
It was originally published in Venice in 1494 by Paganino Paganini, [6] with an identical second edition printed in 1523 in Toscolano. About a thousand copies were originally printed, of which roughly 120 are still extant. [7] In June 2019 an intact first edition sold at auction for US$1,215,000. [4]
While the Summa contained little or no original mathematical work by Pacioli, it was the most comprehensive mathematical text ever published at the time. [8] Its thoroughness and clarity (and the lack of any other similar work available in print) generated strong and steady sales to the European merchants who were the text's intended audience. [1] The reputation the Summa earned Pacioli as a mathematician and intellectual inspired Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, to invite him to serve as a mathematical lecturer in the ducal court, where Pacioli befriended and collaborated with Leonardo da Vinci. [4]
The Summa represents the first published description of many accounting techniques, including double-entry bookkeeping. [8] Some of the same methods were described in other manuscripts predating the Summa (such as the 1458 Della mercatura e del mercante perfetto by Benedetto Cotrugli), but none was published before Pacioli's work, and none achieved the same wide influence. The work's role in standardizing and disseminating professional bookkeeping methods has earned Pacioli a reputation as the "father of accounting". [9]
The book also marks the beginning of a movement in sixteenth-century algebra toward the use of logical argumentation and theorems in the study of algebra, following the model of classical Greek geometry established by Euclid. [3] It is thought to be the first printed work on algebra, [4] and it includes the first printed example of a set of plus and minus signs that were to become standard in Italian Renaissance mathematics: 'p' with a tilde above (p̄) for "plus" and 'm' with a tilde (m̄) for minus. [1] Pacioli's (incorrect) assertion in the Summa that there was no general solution to cubic equations helped to popularize the problem among contemporary mathematicians, contributing to its subsequent solution by Niccolò Tartaglia. [4]
In 1994 Italy issued a 750-lira postage stamp honoring the 500th anniversary of the Summa's publication, depicting Pacioli surrounded by mathematical and geometric implements. The image on the stamp was inspired by the Portrait of Luca Pacioli and contains many of the same elements. [10]
The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new mathematical developments have come to light only in a few locales. From 3000 BC the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, followed closely by Ancient Egypt and the Levantine state of Ebla began using arithmetic, algebra and geometry for purposes of taxation, commerce, trade and also in the field of astronomy to record time and formulate calendars.
Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli, O.F.M. was an Italian mathematician, Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and an early contributor to the field now known as accounting. He is referred to as the father of accounting and bookkeeping and he was the first person to publish a work on the double-entry system of book-keeping on the continent. He was also called Luca di Borgo after his birthplace, Borgo Sansepolcro, Tuscany.
Year 1494 (MCDXCIV) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar.
Double-entry bookkeeping, also known as double-entry accounting, is a method of bookkeeping that relies on a two-sided accounting entry to maintain financial information. Every entry to an account requires a corresponding and opposite entry to a different account. The double-entry system has two equal and corresponding sides, known as debit and credit; this is based on the fundamental accounting principle that for every debit, there must be an equal and opposite credit. A transaction in double-entry bookkeeping always affects at least two accounts, always includes at least one debit and one credit, and always has total debits and total credits that are equal. The purpose of double-entry bookkeeping is to allow the detection of financial errors and fraud.
A trial balance is an internal financial statement that lists the adjusted closing balances of all the general ledger accounts contained in the ledger of a business as at a specific date. This list will contain the name of each nominal ledger account in the order of liquidity and the value of that nominal ledger balance. Each nominal ledger account will hold either a debit balance or a credit balance. The debit balance values will be listed in the debit column of the trial balance and the credit value balance will be listed in the credit column. The trading profit and loss statement and balance sheet and other financial reports can then be produced using the ledger accounts listed on the same balance.
Benedetto Cotrugli was a Ragusan merchant, economist, scientist, diplomat and humanist.
Lattice multiplication, also known as the Italian method, Chinese method, Chinese lattice, gelosia multiplication, sieve multiplication, shabakh, diagonally or Venetian squares, is a method of multiplication that uses a lattice to multiply two multi-digit numbers. It is mathematically identical to the more commonly used long multiplication algorithm, but it breaks the process into smaller steps, which some practitioners find easier to use.
Beniamino Segre was an Italian mathematician who is remembered today as a major contributor to algebraic geometry and one of the founders of finite geometry.
Scipione del Ferro was an Italian mathematician who first discovered a method to solve the depressed cubic equation.
Divina proportione, later also called De divina proportione is a book on mathematics written by Luca Pacioli and illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci, completed by February 9th, 1498 in Milan and first printed in 1509. Its subject was mathematical proportions and their applications to geometry, to visual art through perspective, and to architecture. The clarity of the written material and Leonardo's excellent diagrams helped the book to achieve an impact beyond mathematical circles, popularizing contemporary geometric concepts and images.
This is a timeline of pure and applied mathematics history. It is divided here into three stages, corresponding to stages in the development of mathematical notation: a "rhetorical" stage in which calculations are described purely by words, a "syncopated" stage in which quantities and common algebraic operations are beginning to be represented by symbolic abbreviations, and finally a "symbolic" stage, in which comprehensive notational systems for formulas are the norm.
The year 1537 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed here.
Della mercatura e del mercante perfetto written by Benedetto Cotrugli around 1400 was the first bookkeeping manuscript and trade manual. The title has been translated in English by the alternate names of Of commerce and the perfect merchant, On merchantry and the perfect merchant, and On trade and the perfect dealer.
The Portrait of Luca Pacioli is a painting attributed to the Italian Renaissance artist Jacopo de' Barbari, dating to around 1500 and housed in the Capodimonte Museum, Naples, southern Italy. The painting portrays the Renaissance mathematician Luca Pacioli and may have been painted by his collaborator Leonardo da Vinci. The person on the right has not been identified conclusively, but could be the German painter Albrecht Dürer, whom Barbari met between 1495 and 1500.
De arte supputandi libri quattuor was the first printed work on arithmetic published in England. Published in 1522, it was written by Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London, and based on Luca Pacioli's Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità. It is dedicated to Sir Thomas More.
The history of accounting or accountancy can be traced to ancient civilizations.
Paganino Paganini, was an Italian printer and publisher from the Republic of Venice during the Renaissance. He was the original publisher of Luca Pacioli's mathematical works, Summa de arithmetica and De divina proportione, and of what is thought to be the first printed version of the Quran in Arabic.
Juan Andres was a 16th-century priest and mathematician known by his book on arithmetics.
Giuseppina Masotti Biggiogero was an Italian mathematician and historian. Known for her work in algebraic geometry, she also wrote noted histories of mathematicians, like Maria Gaetana Agnesi and Luca Pacioli. She was a member of the Lombard Institute Academy of Science and Letters and won both the Bordoni Prize and Torelli Prize for her work.
De quinque corporibus regularibus is a book on the geometry of polyhedra written in the 1480s or early 1490s by Italian painter and mathematician Piero della Francesca. It is a manuscript, in the Latin language; its title means [the little book] on the five regular solids. It is one of three books known to have been written by della Francesca.