Sun, 15 Apr 2018
On the smallest natural number
The earliest known mathematics book printed in Europe is an untitled arithmetic text published in Treviso in 1478, Originally written in Venetian dialect.
The Treviso Arithmetic states unequivocally:
Number is a multitude brought together or assembled from several units, and always from two at least, as in the case of 2, which is the first and the smallest number.
And a little later:
Of [the digits] the first figure, 1, is not called a number but the source of number.
(English translations are from David Eugene Smith, A Source Book in Mathematics (1959). A complete translation appears in Frank J. Swetz, Capitalism and Arithmetic The New Math of the Fifteenth Century (1987).)
By the way, today is the 311th birthday of Leonhard Euler.
[Other articles in category /math] permanent link