Tonight, we’ll read from “Elements of Arithmetic” written by Augustus De Morgan and published in 1846.

De Morgan was a British mathematician and logician. He was also known as a brilliant and witty writer. Personally, he was an atheist at a time when his expression of belief limited his academic career early. The prejudice didn’t last forever and because of his mathematical legacy, there is a crater on the moon named after him.

The history of arithmetic includes the period from the emergence of counting before the formal definition of numbers and arithmetic operations over them by means of a system of axioms. Arithmetic — the science of numbers, their properties and their relations — is one of the main mathematical sciences. It is closely connected with algebra and the theory of numbers.