Algebra Sets, Symbols, and the Language of Thought – John Tabak Must-Have

Algebra developed independently in several places around the world, with Hindu, Greek, and Arabic ideas and problems arising at different points in history. Mostly rhetorical in its early forms, the symbolic form of algebra used today was formalized in the 17th century and later. In the past two centuries, algebra has taken two diverging paths. One is toward increasingly higher levels of abstraction, and the other is toward more concrete computational methods. Both paths are greatly influenced by past theor…