Why did our civilization switch to a # system based on 10? Why did it take so long to accept negative #'s?

Question

Negative numbers, as solutions to problems were viewed as illogical for centuries. Fibonacci, proved it's legitimacy before his death; still it was years before mathematicians accepted this conept. Why?

Answer 1

Firstly it took a fair amount of time for the concept of zero to emerge in mathematics; pictorially how does one represent that? To us the legend 0 is obvious, but to different people it could have meant different things; the sun, the moon, the earth, or a whole. And also, what is the point of representing the absence of everything?
I believe that it was not until some time after the closing of The School of Athens in 529AD and the shifting of the centre of inteellect to the middle east that the invention of zero came about, still visible in the worlds 'algebra' and 'algorithm'.

Negative numbers of course is an even bigger concept to grasp; bear in mind that now one has to explain the meaning of a negative; which may be misunderstood as having less than something- how is that possible?

Also bear in mind that what often happen is that for a concept to take root there must be a paradigm shift, that is to say the common way of thinking must be changed, and this often occurs through members of the old way of thinking literally dying out rather than accept the new method.

Hope this gives you something to think about- while the concept of zero and thus a reference point for negative values are obvious to us, imagine someone telling you something that challenged everything you thought you knew; and see how easily you'd accept a new way of thinking!

P.S. Base 10 is not useless in roman numerals they had X = 10 XX=20, etc and other letters for different values, eg L = 50; C=100 D = 500, M = 1000.

Answer 2

Base 10 (Decimal) Numbering system
The use of 10 digits for a numbering system may be seen to arise from counting on our 10 fingers. Ej: count on your fingers up to ten, put a mark in the sand and continue counting on fingers.
The modern system of decimal numbers was introduced, along with so-called Arabic numerals, to Europe in the thirteenth century by Leonardo Pisano, an Italian mathematician. People used before them the Roman figures, a legacy from the Etruscans. Although the Arabs learned them from the Indians (who may have learned it from the Chinese) centuries earlier.

For a long time, negative solutions to problems were considered "false" because they couldn't be found in the real world (in the sense that one cannot have a negative number of, for example, seeds). The Latin root of today's word is negare, to deny. The negative numbers, in this sense, denying or invalidating an equivalent positive quantity.
During the 7th century, negative numbers, and the equivalent word for negative were introduce by Brahmagupta, a Hindu mathematician around 600 AD.
From the 8th century, the Islamic world learnt about negative numbers from Arabic translations of Brahmagupta's works. Knowledge of negative numbers eventually reached Europe through Latin translations of Arabic and Indian works. European mathematicians however, for the most part, resisted the concept of negative numbers until the 17th century, mainly because it was againts God and nature.

Answer 3

In the past, number systems were based largely on natural cycles -- the revolution of the earth around the sun, the revolution of the moon around the earth, and the revolution of the earth. These were the important quantities for the first civilizations. Note that none of these were based on 10. Using number systems based on 10 take advantage of the number "0", whose properties were not known until relatively recently (1000 years or so).

Answer 4

Our number system is based on 10 because most people have 10 fingers and 10 toes. And people didn't accept negatives at first because how can you have negative something unless you're drowning in debt?

Answer 5

Base 10 is because we have 10 digits(fingers), just like our 10-digit number system.

Negative numbers were probably considered illogical because there were no "negatives" in their life, at that time. The smallest thing there was was nothing.

Answer 6

Base-10 seemed a much better plan than others, really. Binary was too inefficient (heck, expressing 10 in binary is lengthy). Ancient Mayans used a base 20, which worked decently, though due to their destruction never gained real prominence. Base-10 just worked best.

Answer 7

Of course, we still use base-sixty, 24 and 365 for time. Base 10 only started being useful when we adopted the Arabic zero. Base ten is useless in Roman numerals, for instance.

Answer 8

base 10 because our hands are base 10 (10 fingers)
as for negative numbers, that's something the Greeks came up with (along with "0") because they were doing mathematics. the Romans used numbers to count things, therefore they had no need of either zero or negatives.

Answer 9

it's counter intuitive, and a hard concept to fully grasp