Sorry, I didn't realize there was actually a previous reading due here...Quote: (see left)
Question: The Julian Calendar did not have the zero issue associated with it because of its dating origins. What year, on the Julian calendar, was the Gregorian calender adopted?
Comment: I thought that it was weird to think about the fact that there is no year zero. Of course, as the book mentions, zero is not usually used as a counting number, and just as the years go from 1 B.C to 1 AD, so, too, do the centuries jump from the first century B.C. to the first century AD, which, of course has a zero in the hundreds, or "centuries" position. However, as strange as the mix-up between B.C. and AD is, the fact remains that, had the Pope decided to include a year zero, the concept, even with the knowledge of the logic behind it, would be stranger still. I suppose that, no matter which way we turn, we will be stuck in this matter.
Another part I found interesting about the reading is how late in the game the concept and notion of zero comes into play. This is 1582. Shakespeare is on the up and up, the Ottoman are rising to power just a few years after conquering the Byzantines, and the Renaissance in Europe has already started. And zero is still [insert zero equivalent expression here], nowhere to be seen. Such a strange thought that Shakespeare, though granted the knowledge of zero as a number and a concept and as a digit used to hold place value, did not understand it in the same way that we do today.
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