[XeTeX] Dinosaurs

Zdenek Wagner zdenek.wagner at gmail.com
Mon Sep 12 23:44:02 CEST 2011


2011/9/12 Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd) <P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk>:
>
>
> Tobias Schoel wrote:
>> Shouldn't real dinosaurs (real as in MTV Real Life) calculate using only the Peano Axioms and the unary system? I mean, the natural numbers and the peano axioms are nature given / god given (choose whatever you like) and every human before homo sapiens had only the cognitive capabilities to use the unary system: “Hey, I saw ||||| deer, let's go hunt them.” “Oh no, I saw ||| lions, they would kill us.”
>
> Are you sure ? My understanding of palæoanthropology is that, long
> before man was able to differentiate ||||| deer from |||||||| deer,
> he could tell | deer from || deer from > || deer, and that was the
> limit of his calculating ability.
>
I am not an expert but I have seen in some internet textbook of
Sanskrit that originally there were just three numerals: one, two,
many. This is probably a reason why some languages have singular, dual
and plural.

> ** Phil.
>
>
>
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-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz



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