It is often said that Indians invented the zero, which then allowed the invention of negative numbers, complex numbers, and then modern mathematics and physics. The Roman numeral system (which followed the Greek system of counting) did not have zero. After all, zero represented “nothing”, which was purely conceptual but not physical. When zero is …
As a follow-up to an earlier post, where I described how natural laws arise as a result of qualities, this post explores this idea further using an example. Since modern science grew out of the idea that matter is res extensa—i.e., that it has only one property of extension in space—this post also illustrates the …
This post discusses the widespread notion that the mind is some kind of computer; that the computer is able to represent knowledge, and this knowledge can be about the world. As we shall see, this notion is quite silly, although people—who are either not physicists, mathematicians, or computer engineers, or just happen to have an academic title …
