Hi Platt
The history of '0' is fascinating - I remember having a very long
conversation (couple of hours) with one of my college lecturers some
years ago and did a bit of research into it's history around that time.
There's a good article on wikipedia about it at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(number)
It seems that Arabic culture imported the idea from India through their
trading links and introduced it into the west as a useful concept.
The Greeks had the same problem as I did, which is that there is a
problem attributing something to nothing! I came to the conclusion that
it's more like a manipulator than a number as when you divide a number
by 0 you get infinity and when you multiply another number by 0 you get
0! Subtracting, adding or whatever seems to leave the original number
intact.
Cheers
Horse
On 21/02/2010 15:35, [email protected] wrote:
On 21 Feb 2010 at 4:01, Horse wrote:
Hey Horse,
Right you are. Thanks. In the words of a politician, "I misspoke." I should
have said, "We in the West owe much to them including the invention of
Arabic numerals."
Platt
Erm.... I think you mean the Indians (the ones in India!).
Horse
On 20/02/2010 23:54, [email protected] wrote:
We in the West owe much to them including the invention of zero.
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