The Three Thousand Year Reich of Negative Numbers (part one)

The curious reader might be interested to know that Diophantus and the Greek thinkers rejected the concept of negative numbers (and irrational numbers, of course) as “patently ridiculous” and “idiotic.” And we are a Greek-based society. So to borrow David Hume’s plaintive question – Then whence Negative Numbers? The answer to this question lies in [...]

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Imaginary numbers (part one)

This concept kind of shoots itself in the foot, so I don’t need to spend much time on it. Using an imaginary number in an equation is like intentionally using a false premise in an argument, which is of course totally inappropriate in scholarship. In fact, the man who invented Imaginary Numbers was an ophthalmologist [...]

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Infinity (part one)

I don’t think I need to spend much time on infinity. Infinitus est numerus stultorum. It suffices to point out that you cannot show me infinity of anything whatsoever. Since everything is finite, including every number, putting them all together will still not get you to infinity. According to math (and also its feisty sidekick, [...]

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