Two quick items: (1) In the arguments about Europe's very early greater propensity to measure and count -- when did the Chinese invent the abacus? This "counting device" remained more rapid and accurate than western mechanical and electric calculators until the 1960s (when merchants in my local Chinatown gave up the abacuses they had used when I was a boy and went to conventional cash registers and calculators). Fascination with measurement certainly goes back to the ancient greeks, whose studies of geometry, conic sections, and Pythagoras' theorum -- not to mention Plato's foundation of the universe and society on a mystic numerology -- are as striking as any interest in surveying. One should also read Christopher Eyre's essay in vol. 40 (1997) of the Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient on calculations of profit from land leasing in Greco- Roman Egypt; landholders needed pretty sophisticated methods of surveying and counting then too. Roman magistrates were obsessed with counting to ensure adequate grain supplies and bread baking for the provisioning of Rome. And one presumes the architects of the pyramids (c. 2500 BC) were obsessed with counting and measurement, as otherwise it's impossible to explain the precision in the layout and proportions of the pyramids themselves.(posted 8751 days ago)It is certainly true that in the post-Roman west European chaos and depopulation, such matters as grand architecture, provisioning large cities, speculating on grain harvests, etc., faded in importance. So perhaps their re-emergence, along with importation of Arab texts on algebra and such, made the 13th century appear to be newly "obsessed" with counting. (One could also say they were obsessed with scholastic nominalist debates, which we do not, in hindsight, associate with later progress). Much of what looks "new" from the perspective of late medieval times in contrast to early medieval times comes from neglecting the relative decline post 500 AD.
In any event, medieval Europeans had no early monopoly on sophisticated calculations or on widespread concern with counting.
(2) Interesting side-note. The latest issue of THE ECONOMIST notes that today, demand for silver is rapidly increasing, and the countries that are the world's two largest suppliers of silver bullion are -- Mexico and Peru! Plus ca change ...
Regards to all,