Re: deprogramming language
erespess@inil.com
Tue, 26 Oct 1999 22:28:12 -0400
>Zero was invented by a Persian man with a rather scary last name starting
>with Z. The introduction of zero revolutionized the way people look at
>mathematics. How did they do mathematics before? I guess they just
>considered zero to be the space between two rows of beads on an abacus or if
>they did the computations in their head, added 2 to get from 1 to -1. I
>really don't know, maybe Steven Gabriel does. I'm interested in what they
>did before zero also.
I have been under the impression that the concept of zero came about after
Islam, and before that, wasn't considered at all. This a very recent
discovery in the grand scheme of mathematics. If this timetable is
correct, the pyramids were built without the knowledge or acknowledgement
of zero, and with a geometry (which i also love) we still haven't
completely unraveled. My point is a binary system is one way of looking at
things. yes - in a binary system everything boils down to 1 and 0,
presence and absence. But the original discussion wasn't even about
presence and absence. It was about the differentiation of self vs. other,
which is a completely different issue, both being "presences".
Although differentiation is important in language, arguably essential, it
is not the only essential element. Differentiation without association has
no meaning. I can know that two things are opposites, but unless I know
what one of those things is already, the differentation means nothing to
me. Self vs. other seems toSme to be valuable symbolically only because
self is a known (to some extent) quantity. symbols are valuable (or
valued) due to the association (be it current feeling or from memory) one
has with them.
Elizabeth