logarithmancy
Apr. 19th, 2017 07:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordlogarithmancy or logarithmomancy - n., divination by using logarithms.
There are a few mentions of this practice dating from the 17th century, not long after the invention of logarithms, but without details, and no one today (not even such spell-books Google has digitized) has a clue how this might have been done. This book has a suggestion for reinventing it. Some sources claim this it means divination by algorithm (one of them even saying it's been supplanted by using computers), which makes even less sense. Coined form logarithm + -mancy, of course.
---L.
There are a few mentions of this practice dating from the 17th century, not long after the invention of logarithms, but without details, and no one today (not even such spell-books Google has digitized) has a clue how this might have been done. This book has a suggestion for reinventing it. Some sources claim this it means divination by algorithm (one of them even saying it's been supplanted by using computers), which makes even less sense. Coined form logarithm + -mancy, of course.
---L.
