We generally believe that the mathematicians led by
Leonardo Fibonacci won out over the Old Guard in replacing Roman numerals with
Hindu-Arabic numerals, but the victory was long drawn out, and is still
incomplete. Businesses continued to use Roman numerals for several centuries
(because addition and subtraction is easier in Roman numerals, and they didn't
have that much call for multiplication and division until interest became
socially acceptable). In Fibonacci's time, and up until the 17th century, clocks
existed almost exclusively in churches and monasteries, where they regulated the
hours of prayer. The Catholic church was having nothing to do with these
new-fangled heathen numbers, especially since the Crusades were on at the time,
and continued for centuries. The Church was especially opposed to the idea of
zero, both as the work of the infidel, and on Aristotelian grounds. That is why
the the twelve-hour system starts at XII, followed by I, and not
0:00:00.
Typewriters, computer keyboards, and school recitations
still put 0 after 9 rather than before 1. Such is Human
Stupidity.
We had the same argument over the empty set in the 19th
century (part of what the Nazis later denounced as Jewish mathematics) and over
empty arrays in APL and related languages. It's not over yet, either in the
culture at large or in Lojban.
Edward Cherlin
|
- RE: [lojban] (from lojban-beginners) pi'e Edward Cherlin
- RE: [lojban] (from lojban-beginners) pi'e Carl W. Brown
- Re: [lojban] (from lojban-beginners) pi'e DougEwell2
- RE: [lojban] (from lojban-beginners) pi'e Charlie Ruland