[lit-ideas] Re: Numbers

  • From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 08:50:52 -0500

Alex Trifan wrote:

"There are only two fundamental numbers. 0 and 1. Everything else is a
combination of them, fundamentally speaking."

Does it matter at all that the number 0 is a relatively recent
discovery?  The following website has an interesting discussion of this
history:

http://tinyurl.com/5tgqy

I have no idea how accurate or complete a discussion this is.

It does seem problematic to think of the number 0 as being like a
Platonic form.  We can imagine the absence of something but I am not
sure whether one can think absence as, well, something.  Plato himself
warned against talk of nothingness precisely because it could only turn
nothingness into something and therefore be nonsense.  If this is
reasonable, perhaps the two fundamental numbers are 1 and 2.  That is,
there is something and there is difference.


Sincerely,

Phil Enns
Toronto, ON

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