Did you know that the Egyptians counted in base 12 and not our base 10? If I knew this, it has been lost until yesterday when I found out how our day became 24 hours.
They counted their knuckles on their fingers and used their thumbs as placeholders. That's how we got to our units of time - the Egyptians divided the day into smaller parts based on the interval between sunrise and sunset. Using their duodecimal (base 12) and sexagesimal (base 60) systems, here we are.
Wikipedia says that historically units of time in many civilizations are duodecimal. We know how common twelve is - 12 inches in an imperial foot, 12 troy ounces in a troy pound, 12 items in a dozen. It says that the number twelve is a superior highly composite number and superior to base-10.
So how did we come to using base-10? It comes down to writing down large numbers. Early number systems have one thing in common. They require someone to write down many symbols to record a single number and create new symbols for each larger number. The Ancient Egyptians represented 300 with three coiled ropes. Positional systems allow for the reuse of the same symbols. It was Indian mathematicians in the 7th Century who perfected the decimal positional system. The big breakthrough was the number 0. That started with the Sumerian culture 5,000 years ago, moved on to the Babylonian empire, and then to India via the Greeks.
Zero and nothingness became a big deal in the 20th century even though the philosophical notion of nothingness was developed very early in Indian thought and in cosmogonical myths - "And the earth was without form, and void."
The 19th and 20th century explored nothingness at great length.
On the one hand, zero is a bona fide cardinal number, yet on the other it is linked to ideas of nothingness and non-being. How curious this seems that the philosophical aspect arises: our understanding of zero is tied to questions concerning the status of non-being.
Where would we be philosophically if we'd continued in the duodecimal system? The Egyptians believed in everlasting joy rather than death. So I don't think they worried about nothingness. In fact their gods imbued every day with meaning and were considered one's close friends and benefactors. No existentialism for them.
I seem to have endless pictures of tree bark. Here's a sample collage.
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