In a message dated 18/02/2009 03:26:19 GMT Standard Time, skb@BOOTLE.BIZ
writes:
... With a
little ingenuity not God but we humans can do it [derive 1 from 0]
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Recalling VN’s statement quoted recently by Jansy
that ONE is the only real number, and everything else comes from addition,
you may see some contradictions afoot. Was Kaplan aware of VN’s
assertion: VN the poet/wordmaster but not, on this occasion, the mathematician
able to see the beauty of 0 playing the prime role he assigns to 1? Was VN
aware of the Salem Codex? The irony will escape the many non-mathematicians on
our list, I fear.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
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.
where {a, b, ...} denotes the set containing a, b, ... .
In other words, 1 is the set containing zero, 2 is the set containing zero
and 1, etc.
Anthony Stadlen