Re: zero, my hero
jason varsoke (jjv@caesun.msd.ray.com)
Wed, 27 Oct 1999 10:25:28 -0400 (EDT)
Actually, Zero started as just a place holder, sort of like a decimal, or
a comma. One hundred and eight is represented as 108, and as you can see
the zero has no value here. The romans had no zero and it messed up their
math quite a bit.
Before they had zero, they had nothing. Actually, this is difficult to
explain. When we say we have zero apples, what do you think we're
actually saying? You can't possess zero something, because what you have
is nothing. That is to say, you are not in possession of anything. This
is the way it was thought of before we had a number 0. You either had
four apples or you didn't have anything. There was no such thing as a
negative number either.
-j
________oOOOo__/~~~~__oOOOo_________________________________
Jason Varsoke jvarsoke@bigfoot.com
For good mental hygiene, shave with Occam's Razor twice daily
On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, Face Inthecrowd wrote:
> 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.
>
>
> >From: erespess@inil.com
> >Reply-To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
> >To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
> >Subject: Re: deprogramming language
> >Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 15:47:05 -0400
> >
> > >The numbers "5" and "8" permit a splendid range of complicated equations
> > >that are infinitely more complex than presence vs. absence, but you
> > >can't get the numbers to begin with if you don't invoke the principal
> > >of presence vs. absence.
> >
> >So, how did math work before the concept of "zero" was invented?
> >
> >
> >
>
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