TallyMan wrote:
Yes indeed and as someone else pointed out, our little alien friend here would also likely count using base 6. I'm referring solely to the fixed principles or "laws" of mathematics rather than the techniques, terminology and methodology used to express those principles.
There's an extent at which some mathematical laws are a product of our notation. 0.9^ = 1 is an example of that.
If we are talking about aliens that may as well be based on completely different chemicals than us. They may not even be using polynomials to define their numbers. If the Romans survived so long with their stupid number system, maybe the aliens managed to do it with something like that. Maybe the aliens are so strange that they use base 0.1 or base pi?
You could see it as just translation. And it is just translation. But what if our languages are so different that their language allowed them to find stuff that we didn't and vice versa? Or so different that we can't share knowledge with each other.
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21 Sep 2012, 12:05 am
