History
The Greeks distinguished between several types of magnitude, including:
- Positive fractions
- Line segments (ordered by length)
- Plane figures (ordered by area)
- Solids (ordered by )
- Angles (ordered by angular magnitude)
They proved that the first two could not be the same, or even isomorphic systems of magnitude. They did not consider negative magnitudes to be meaningful, and magnitude is still chiefly used in contexts in which zero is either the lowest size or less than all possible sizes.
Read more about this topic: Magnitude (mathematics)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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