kwaw
Fulgour said:1234_isn't_0123
1 isn't the point marked '1' on the ruler, it is the unit designated from 0 to 1, so:
1234 is 0_1_2_3_4
Alef as 'one' occupies the spatial unit 0_1.
Kwaw
Fulgour said:1234_isn't_0123
One is all of One, but if you want to start countingkwaw said:1 isn't the point marked '1' on the ruler, it is the unit designated from 0 to 1, so: 1234 is 0_1_2_3_4
Alef as 'one' occupies the spatial unit 0_1.
Umbrae said:Sounds like we are confusing cardinal with ordinal.
There is no 0 on a ruler.
Greek astronomers used the glyph that we would recognize as zero in the recording of astronomical data. There are numerous explanations, that it stood for ‘Ouden” or “Obol”. The usage did not stick around.
Ptolemy, in “Almagest” (130 AD) uses the Babylonian base sixty system and their ‘place-holder’ concept. Sorta Kinda. Ptolemy did not think of it as a number or a concept, but as a punctuation mark. Kind of like a period.
In India, the Hindu word for zero was ‘shunya’, or ‘sunya’ meaning ‘void’. This was translated into Arabic as ‘sifr’, and into English as ‘Cypher’.
Mohammad ibn Mus al-Kwarizmi (ce 780-850) was a mathimatician who introduced Hindu Arabic numerals, his book “Kitab al-jabr wa al-mugabalah” influenced these concepts when it was translated in the 12th Century.
In 1202, Leonardo of Pisa (or Leonardo Fibonacci – of whom I have posted about on more than one occaision) explained the concept of positional base notation, the point, negative numbers, and the zero, in his book, “Book of Abacus.”
However he speaks of the ‘sign’ zero rather than the number zero. And the ‘Fibonacci Sequence’ that kept scholars amused for hundreds of years is not (surprise surprise) a zeroth sequence – although one needs to grasp the concept of zero as a place holder and an abstract concept to fully grasp the enormity of the sequential implications. (they are still writing books on the Fibonacci Sequence, and the Golden Mean).
The Glyph that we refer to as Zero, came from India and in Arabic is called ‘galgal’, or “Wheel”.
Seriously folks. A little research, a little history.