[Arlo] Zero has a fascinating story, you can read a nice summary of this on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(number) "Records show that the ancient Greeks seemed unsure about the status of zero as a number: they asked themselves "How can nothing be something?", leading to interesting philosophical and, by the Medieval period, religious arguments about the nature and existence of zero and the vacuum. The paradoxes of Zeno of Elea depend in large part on the uncertain interpretation of zero." (Wikipedia Excerpt) [Krimel] This horror and distrust of the number zero led the Greeks to adopt a truly bizarre system of calculation that often involved conversions back and forth to a Babylonian system of notation in base 60. I recommend Charles Seife's Zero: the Biography of a Dangerous Idea for a lucid account of Zero, the place holder of history. It is a real eye opener regarding the relationship between Greek philosophy and Greek mathematics. Seife does not stop with the Greeks. He covers ideas about Zero and its relationship to infinity all the way through to QM and zero point energy. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
