¶ Secrecy (1)
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Secrecy: Secrecy of Mathematical Knowledge: Navigation:
"I said to myself, I think that the first mathematics which related to a plurality of stars, and where you are, the first triangulation, occurred in relation to the navigators. I think then that the people who sailed into the windward, who started going into the prevailing winds westward, became the first inventors of the navigation. You cannot invent navigation unless you have something that you became familiar with. I think then that the people who invented the navigation invented the first really important kinds of mathematics dealing in triangulation, in major patterns. And so I think that mathematics and navigation developed in a very high way on the sea, and later on came up onto the land. But people who knew their way about the sea knew how to get to very important resources, and there were great premiums paid for what they could bring in a very secret kind of a mind-- and they began to guard their secret of navigation very carefully. I think that the great mathematical secrets were really very progressively hidden. When the navigators were going westward out of the Straits Settlements areas, and so forth, and finally negotiated across westward of the Indian Ocean to the eastern shores of Africa and the southern shores of
