the concept of zero

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Was watching Engineering an Empire on the history channel and the episode was covering the Mayan empire.

They were talking about how the Mayan empire “created” (don’t remember the exact wording used) the concept of zero. Which aided them in the designing and building of their structures and temples. And due to them knowing the concept of zero they were much more advanced than European empires/civilizations. If that’s true then how were much older civilizations able to build the structures they did without the concept of zero?

In: 395

17 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

This is going to be very trippy but you have to like realize that the way you think about numbers is entirely because you were socialized to think about them this way. Counting itself up to like a dozen is likely built into our brains but beyond that all of math is something we are taught and socialized into. The concept of nothing of course has always existed, but the concept that nothing can be a number isn’t as obvious as it might seem at first, and frankly might even be tied into how we use language and categorize things in our mind.

That said, so long as you’re mindful of the idea that nothing does make sense logically then you can do a lot.

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