The understandability of the natural world is all the more impressive when one considers the fact that fundamental human assumptions about time and space — the idea that there are 60 minutes in an hour, and that a
circle can be broken down into 360 degrees — come from a time with «no articulated sense of nature... no reference or word for it,» according to Francesca Rochberg, professor of
Near Eastern studies at the
University of California, Berkeley.