How would you know whether an ancient culture had zero?

(johndcook.com)

19 points | by ibobev 3 days ago

1 comments

  • gmuslera 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 29 minutes 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.