> “Historically the term was used for a number that was a multiple of 1, or to the whole part of a mixed number. Only positive integers were considered, making

> “Historically the term was used for a number that was a multiple of 1, or to the whole part of a mixed number. Only positive integers were considered, making the term synonymous with the natural numbers” In fact, they didn't even consider 1 to be a number, let alone zero -- at least aristotle didn't, and his definition was the accepted one in Europe for many centuries. Though I think you need to sort of separate out what philosophers and mathematicians thought about numbers from what regular people did. I think people obviously had an intuitive understanding of zero and one as quantities, even if it wasn't formally defined that way by philosophers for thousands of years.