Aeschylus writes, in “Prometheus Chained,” “for them, I invented numbers, the first among all sciences, but I also taught humans how to combine letters, memory of all things, mother of all arts.”
In the history of civilization, numbering systems preceded writing, particularly for practical and accounting needs.
However, in Western culture it is Greece that has developed the most mathematical forms of intelligence, again beginning with the introduction of the alphabet.
The concept of element (in Greek, στοιχεῖον, stoicheion) denotes, from ancient Greek philosophy, both the letters of the alphabet and a prime, minimal, that is, not further reducible or analyzable, component of a compound whole. Plato was the first to use the term stoicheia in a cosmological sense, taking up and expanding the meaning common in his day of “letters of the alphabet.”
Just as letters separate language into exact phonetic units (A, B, C…), so rational thought tends to reduce reality to its elements. The earliest philosophers-the Presocratics-are in search of the elements that gave birth to the universe. Plato writes in the Theaetetetus, “It seemed to me to hear some say that the first elements (stoicheia), so to speak, of which we and other things are composed, have no explanation.” Socrates reminds us that water, air, earth and fire can be understood as “elements” of the universe, so when referred to the alphabet they are to be considered not compositions of syllables, but individual letters.
Mathematics and exact science take their cues from the numbering system, initially consisting of the letters of the alphabet. Derrick de Kerchove develops the concept of the brainframe, a framework created in our brains by information technology, and states, “it is the alphabetical brainframe and the alphabetical pattern that have induced our minds to dig deep into matter by breaking it down into smaller and smaller units, down to the atom.”
De Kerkhove again states that introjecting the alphabet into the brain was like installing an exceptionally powerful program into an exceptionally powerful computer. The brainframe created by the alphabet led our brains to organize information on the model of writing.
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