| Pete Dashwood 2007-09-26, 9:55 pm |
|
"tlmfru" <lacey@mts.net> wrote in message
news:%YzKi.91761$Pv4.81071@newsfe19.lga...
>
> Pete Dashwood <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote in message > >
> the
>
> It's also a possibility that they didn't have the mathematics to really
> understand what "eternity" (an infinite number of years) implied. I
> believe
> that the Gr s (the most mathematically advanced group in the ancient
> world) had "myriad" (10,000?) as the biggest named number in common use;
> and
> while Archimedes, in the "Sand Reckoner", got up into truly gigantic
> numbers, even by today's standards, his method didn't affect general
> usage.
> If your biggest number is "myriad" and your biggest expression is "myriads
> of myriads of myriads ...", even if you go on for half an hour, you have
> no
> idea what number you're really talking about. It would probably have been
> beyond comprehension that any number you could construct is zero as
> compared
> to infinity: therefore it wouldn't have troubled them because they
> wouldn't
> have understood what they were saying.
>
> PL
>
Not so different from today, then? :-)
Pete.
--
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."
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