From: Alex Ferguson (abf@yeats.ucc.ie)
Date: Wed 10 Feb 1999 - 17:01:31 EET
Steve Lieb stateth:
> To regress slightly, it's not that the CONCEPT of nothing was invented, it
> was the concept of the "zero" character: that something should represent
> nothing.
To be more precise, it's the idea of a _numeral_ zero; that zero is
a valid and useful mathematic entity. Clearer examples are the
'discovery' of negative integers, complex numbers, etc (which to this
day, stroppy students of various ages complain are "not proper numbers").
> At least that's what it was in the RW as I understand it. Clearly everyone
> knew that if you had three apples and took away three apples, you had
> nothing left.
Consider, glasshoppah, the conceptual leap involved from 'nothing'
to 'zero apples'. (And indeed, the increase in abstraction involved.)
Slan libh,
Alex.
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