According to Van der Warden "Science awakening"[1] Ancient Greeks treated numbers as some kind of "dirty" (Real) model of a platonic Ideal of a quantity. Number

According to Van der Warden "Science awakening"[1] Ancient Greeks treated numbers as some kind of "dirty" (Real) model of a platonic Ideal of a quantity. Numbers were invented by filthy traders and accountants while wise philosophers used geometry to reason about quantities. This attitude to numbers can be felt even now when we are taught to solve straightedge and compass construction problems. Greeks had no issues dealing with square root of 2 with geometry or "geometric algebra" how Van der Warden names it. [1] https://archive.org/details/scienceawakening0000waer https://archive.org/details/scienceawakening0000waer