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"Nothing" as a concept always existed of course. But it wasn't considered a number, generally. Certainly no one counted "nothing, one, two", and even today natu
by tsimionescu 2y ago
"Nothing" as a concept always existed of course. But it wasn't considered a number, generally. Certainly no one counted "nothing, one, two", and even today natural language doesn't include "nothing" or some equivalent as a numeral noun.
- NeoTar 2y agoYou need to be careful about the phrase “considered a number” since I believe one, or unity, was also not considered a number by some ancient civilisation - i.e. a number was only multiple copies of unity. [I believe this YouTube video goes into more detail in its discussion of why 1 was not considered Prime in the ancient world: https://youtu.be/R33RoMO6xeA https://youtu.be/R33RoMO6xeA]
- threatofrain 2y agoThat's where I'm quite skeptical. Imagine you are in charge of trade or rationing important village resources in the winter. It just seems to me almost necessary that people would have a way to symbolically indicate that all the sheep are gone. As opposed to just not having any symbol for that at all.