Hi Jim, offhand, I cannot think of any major contributions to mathematics made by the Romans. When I think of applied mathematics, my first thoughts go to the Egyptians but then Stonehenge and Carnac in Portugal are older. Without a doubt though, the Romans freed applied mathematics from its priestly arcane trappings.
The people that built Rome applied Greek maths in ways that had never been done before. They were professional in the modern sense of the word. That has to be a major social, political and philosophical contribution to science.
We simply cannot throw away their maths, because their maths was Greek maths, and we are still using it.
I know that you hate models but you must realise that implicit in your argument is another model, a model that you never explain. If someone were to say, our concept of the number line is wrong, scrap it and replace it with this instead. That person would be listened to, if the new concept was an improvement. The new concept would have to incorporate the number line concept though. Nothing ever gets simply dumped in maths, things simply gather dust in Platos magic realm.
