Posted January 03, 2020
Nothing is happening here, so I'll just reply to an older post to pass the time.
Exactly. And the first century had only 99 years. The first millenium had 999. Because the monk/theologician who defined the Christian count of years in the year 525 decided to not use a 0 for the first century. The argument was, that the birth of Christ was a single moment and didn't take a whole year. So the year he was supposedly born in was counted as the year before his birth. -1. Since his birth supposedly took place towards it's end. It would have been just as valid to define it as the year 0.
So, it was an arbitrary decision to remove the year 0 from the first century. But that's no reason to remove the first year from all other centuries too and mathematically the omission of the 0 is nonsense. Mathematically it is quite well defined: decades start with the number 0. So do the 100-s and the 1000-s. Everyone who argues that centuries and millennia start with year 1 is just pedantic, nitpicky - and wrong. It's just something that some people invented for the sake of having an argument. No other reason.
Exactly. And the first century had only 99 years. The first millenium had 999. Because the monk/theologician who defined the Christian count of years in the year 525 decided to not use a 0 for the first century. The argument was, that the birth of Christ was a single moment and didn't take a whole year. So the year he was supposedly born in was counted as the year before his birth. -1. Since his birth supposedly took place towards it's end. It would have been just as valid to define it as the year 0.
So, it was an arbitrary decision to remove the year 0 from the first century. But that's no reason to remove the first year from all other centuries too and mathematically the omission of the 0 is nonsense. Mathematically it is quite well defined: decades start with the number 0. So do the 100-s and the 1000-s. Everyone who argues that centuries and millennia start with year 1 is just pedantic, nitpicky - and wrong. It's just something that some people invented for the sake of having an argument. No other reason.