So this is the final straw. Unexpected.

[lliira]

Just saw an article saying the concept of zero is younger than Jesus Christ. Said article also said Aristotle didn't believe in zero. The first, I could roll my eyes at and figure she'd been misinformed. The first paired with the second -- no. Also, this article is by someone attempting to be extremely deep. She Informs the Reader about Dante and Galileo later in the piece. (You know what I mean by Informs the Reader: it's opposed to Sharing With the Reader.)

I have no idea if Aristotle believed in zero, and I do not trust the internet to tell me the truth about this. I do believe, however, that I have just reached my limit. It's been coming for a long time, but now it's very much here. I am tired of trying to bail out the sea with a teaspoon. Maybe this is what middle age is. 

Comments

[lliira]

Heh, that's okay. The concept of zero philosophically, meaning "nothing" and whether it can exist, is older than the number we use in mathematics today. That is something ancient Greek philosophers talked about, and I'm guessing is what she was trying to get at. But then saying it was younger than Jesus. I don't even know.

(The fact that her entire article annoyed the spit out of me, and that it came at a time when anything like that would have meant a breaking point, did not help.)

[madgastronomer]

But... why would you call the philosophical notion of nothingness "zero"? At least in English? Zero is the mathematical idea. That... seems to be just begging for confusion to happen. Just like apparently this author did. Because the philosophical nothing is old, but the mathematical zero is significantly more recent. Using the same term for the two of them gets you inanities like in this paper. AUGH!

[lliira]

I think it was because she wanted to tie it to the pain scale. It didn't work. Obviously.