“Plato's exaltation of mathematics as an august and mysterious
ritual had its roots in dark superstitions which troubled, and
fanciful puerilities which entranced, people who were living through
the childhood of civilization, when even the cleverest people could
not clearly distinguish the difference between saying that 13 is a
'prime' number and saying that 13 is an unlucky number. His influence
on education has spread a veil of mystery over mathematics and helped
to preserve the queer freemasonry of the Pythagorean brotherhoods,
whose members were put to death for revealing mathematical secrets
now printed in school books. It reflects no discredit on anybody if
this veil of mystery makes the subject distasteful. Plato's great
achievement was to invent a religion which satisfies the emotional
needs of people who are out of harmony with their social environment,
and just too intelligent or too individualistic to seek sanctuary in
the cruder forms of animism.”
Lancelot Hogben, Mathematics for the Million (1971)
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