The Divine Proportions of Luca Pacioli by W.A.W. Parker

Author:W.A.W. Parker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mentoris Project

26

THE SUM

I pitched a book to Aldus Manutius, one of the biggest printers in Venice. I had finished a manuscript and now wanted to make a printed mathematical textbook that would contain the sum of all mathematical knowledge known at the time. We would call it the Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita (Summary of arithmetic, geometry, proportions and proportionality). No longer would students have to find and read multiple books just to get an overview. No longer would they have to write down everything their teacher said and rely on the quality of the teacher to convey complex concepts. No longer would only my students at the University of Perugia be given these gifts. My Summa would be a text that all students can use to teach themselves. And the printing press would allow it to be distributed far and wide.

I was confident that Aldus would instantly embrace my proposal. Up until recently, book publishing had been dominated by religious texts and Latin classics. Unlike fruit sellers, who can expect repeat business from their customers who buy the same product day after day, booksellers sell a product that will often outlive its owner. So, after an initial surge in business, booksellers and printers saw their profits decline.

But printers like Aldus, being the businessmen that they are, had stumbled across a new, unexpected market: instructional books. Thousands of printed books were flooding the marketplace, on topics ranging from how to play musical instruments to how to sew garments.

Information that was previously only available to small groups of people was now open to everyone. Regrettably, even in the midst of this explosion, Aldus didn’t think there would be demand for a book about mathematics, or as he called it, “numbers and such,” and he turned me down.

Fortunately, there were now more than 100 other printers in Venice. Unfortunately, nearly all of them turned me down as well. Or, they would agree to the printing as long as I covered the costs associated with its production. Now, as a friar, I was more a man of access than a man of means, so this proposition held the same functional value as an outright refusal.

The printing itself would be relatively inexpensive, mind you. While it cost three times as much to set up and print a book than to have a scribe duplicate the same work, you could print 1,000 copies on a printing press with the same amount of money, whereas the scribe could only make one. I think I told you that already, but it’s worth repeating.

Regardless, let it suffice to say that I could not afford to hire three scribes. As much as I’ve discussed my love for books, you may have assumed that I had scribes transcribing them for me constantly, but truthfully, I don’t think I would have purchased books even if I had been able to afford them, preferring the edition and environment the library provides. In this way, my poverty was a welcome restriction.

I sought

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