From Colin Robinson
Balmain, New South Wales
In his letter defending the assertion that “science is a product of
European thought and culture”, Paul Davies writes: “In the most developed
science, physics, a set of mathematical laws links widely disparate phenomena”
(Letters, 10 February, p 47).
It is true that modern physics is intrinsically mathematical. But is modern
mathematics conceivable without the system of numerals based on place values and
a digit for zero —the system which we know as Hindu-Arabic numerals,
invented almost certainly in India, but quite certainly outside Europe.
