Anthony Stadlen [on SKB's
"With a little ingenuity not God but we humans can do it (derive 1 from
0)" and "Recalling VN’s statement quoted recently ...that ONE is the
only real number, and everything else comes from addition..".] observes:
"Another VN (Von Neumann) derived all the natural numbers (1,2,3,...) from zero
by set theory thus: 1 = {0), 2 = [0, 1}, 3 = {0, 1, 2}, etc."
JM: Didn't VN's quote include a verb
in his sentence (speak, say, write, read, perceive, think) about ONE? It makes
all the difference. Whenever one speaks, or reads,writes, etc ...there is
no absolute "zero", only a human artifact, or a concept, about
"zero." It would be fascinating to find a collection of VN's
observations (and their context) in relation to numbers and
metalanguage.