2014-05-13 11:40 GMT+02:00 Georgi Guninski <[email protected]>: > > My understanding is that they are part of nature. If you think about > it, to hunter-gatherer-level societies, negative numbers could be called > "imaginary": There is no such thing as "negative-3 sheep", for instance. > Nor is there a third of a (living) sheep. It was easy enough for people > to divorce themselves from the idea of integers, or positive numbers. It > was much more difficult to deal with "irrational numbers" (numbers which > could not be expressed as the ratio of two integers).
offtopic and what's worse: "You owe me three sheep. You have -3 sheep." "This grain must be shared between 3 people. 1/3 of the grain is his. 1/3 is hers. 1/3 is mine."
