Discussion (2 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

gmuslera•about 1 hour ago

Looks like translating a positional numbering system from ancient cultures than ruling out or not if they had the concept of zero. It may be a single use symbol, here is nothing, instead of being part of bigger amounts. Numbering systems doesn't have to be positional (nor go too far).

whatsThisBtn4•about 1 hour ago

Gosh I love Wittgenstein for this.

I highly recommend suffering through both early and late Wittgenstein (only wrote 2 books and essentially invented one of the 3 branches of philosophy).

Expect to only understand 10% of what he says, but that is normal.

Separately, pragmatism by William James is an easy 4 hour read and you can have 2/3 of the branches of meta philosophy.

How would you know whether an ancient culture had zero?

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Discussion (2 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews