Yes, but number theory only gained practical application relatively recently. Your claim was that if people in the 1500s and 1600s had had access to this number theory, we’d all be better off now.
Advances in Diophantine number theory in the Renaissance led directly to complex numbers and analytic geometry, which led to calculus and all of physics. If the Library at Alexandria had been preserved, the Industrial Revolution could have happened centuries earlier.
That’s an intriguing causal chain but its length & breadth give me pause. Are there any articles, books, or papers that nicely sum up the evidence for it (and ideally the evidence against it)?
Advances in Diophantine number theory in the Renaissance led directly to complex numbers and analytic geometry, which led to calculus and all of physics. If the Library at Alexandria had been preserved, the Industrial Revolution could have happened centuries earlier.
That’s an intriguing causal chain but its length & breadth give me pause. Are there any articles, books, or papers that nicely sum up the evidence for it (and ideally the evidence against it)?