[LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 88, Issue 31

[Gerard Ashton]

E. G. Richards in "Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History" mentions the
church was leary of negative numbers, and Hindu-Arabic numerals. He suggests
one possible reason being that most of the people who could do arithmetic
with Roman numerals were clergy, and they didn't want to lose their
near-monopoly.

Gerry Ashton

-----Original Message-----
From: leapsecs-bounces at leapsecond.com
[mailto:leapsecs-bounces at leapsecond.com] On Behalf Of Poul-Henning Kamp
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2014 10:45 AM
To: Leap Second Discussion List; Kevin Birth
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 88, Issue 31

In message <CEFC056F.7CAC%kevin.birth at qc.cuny.edu>, Kevin Birth writes:

Kevin,

Do you happen to know if the church actually did ban negative numbers for
some period of time ?

I've seen several popular references claim that the church banned negative
numbers as "the devils numbers" etc, but I've not seen anything about this
subject from what I'd call trustworthy sources.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
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Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
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