時差N小時:數(shù)字零的由來(上)

Did you know that the number zero was discoveredby Hindu mathematicians around the sixth century?What? That's crazy! Zero is just a number. It's notsomething that you have to discover, just there.Well, actually what I mean is … isn't it there?That's… You know what I mean. That was exactly theproblem. Sure, people had the idea of a number thatstands for nothing, but they were confused by it.For many centuries the notion of number “zero” wasdisregarded as nonsense. The whole thing actuallyfrighten people. No,kid? No.Why Aristotle himselfargued that the idea of zero should be outlawed? because when you try to divide othernumbers by zero you don’t get anywhere. Zero times infinity is still zero!

【生詞注釋】

actually adv。事實上

stand for 代表，象征

confuse v.搞亂; 使糊涂

disregard v. 不理會

outlaw v. 使……失去法律保護, 宣告非法

infinity n. 無限大, 無限

【參考譯文】

你知道“0”這個數(shù)字是由印度數(shù)學(xué)家在6世紀(jì)左右發(fā)明的嗎?什么?那太瘋狂了。“0”只是一個數(shù)字，那并不是你必須發(fā)明的，它就在那兒。是的，事實上我的意思是……它不在那兒嗎?那是……我要說的。那正是問題所在，當(dāng)然，人們腦中有這樣一個什么都不表示的數(shù)字概念，但是他們被這個概念搞糊涂了。許多世紀(jì)以來，零的概念被當(dāng)作胡鬧而沒人理會。零的事讓人們感到恐懼。不會吧?你在開玩笑?我不是開玩笑。為什么亞里士多德爭論零的概念是不受法律的?因為當(dāng)你用0除以任何數(shù)字時，得到的仍然是0。0乘以無限大的數(shù)字仍然是0。