[NBLUG/talk] The Romans' ban on zero

[Nancy Harrison]

I've always believed that considering zero a "number" has caused
all the problems of the world. <g> - NH


>Oh good, another "hair-splitting fest."  ; )
>
>On Thursday 29 May 2003 10:55 am, Eric Eisenhart wrote:
>
>> Zero will go into a number an infinite number of times, because it's so
>> small.  If you have a whole pie of circumference P and you give away a
>> slice of P/4 arc length, you can give away 4 of those.  On the other hand,
>> you can give away an infinite amount of no pie.
>
>But how can "nothing" go into "something" any times at all?  Even
>if it's "nothing" times infinity, it's not "going into" something if it's
>nothing!
>
>1 / 0.1 = 10
>1 / 0.01 = 100  ....Oh, I see.  You guys are falling for the limit idea.
>Incorrect, because the limit of 1/x as x approaches 0, as I am defining
>it, is zero.  If f(x) = 1/x, then f(x) goes way, way up as x gets tinier,
>but when x = 0, it plummets down to 0.  Which disproves the whole
>idea of a "continuous function" anyway, because at what value
>does x plummet down to zero?  At that point, there is a fuzziness,
>a discontinuity, a break, a peculiar form of insanity, perhaps, but
>it illustrates the fundamentally illusory nature of higher math.
>
>So, I submit to you, the commonsensical idea that "nothing"
>can't go into "something" should take precedence over
>status quo math, no matter how much that notion may violate
>status quo math.  I prefer common sense to status quo, when
>the two differ.
>
>	-- Steve Zimmerman
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-Nancy Harrison
http://www.sonic.net/~vulpia/index.html