this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2025
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Science Memes

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submitted 8 months ago by NichEherVielleicht@feddit.org to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] TheFogan@programming.dev 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Degrees Celsius is based on freezing and boiling point of water, so if they came up with a base 10 numbering system and water is key to their biology, then they’d probably come up with that.

Waters boiling point isn't a constant though... it's dependent on the atmosphere.

Hell there's also no telling if our preference to base 10 is relative to our number of fingers so neither of those are givens.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Base 10 is also cultural. Babylon used 60, ancient Egypt had 12 (they counted on the bones in their fingers), Rome had 5, and my wife just spent 10 minutes arguing for 8

[–] moopet@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

All maths is done in base 10.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Because of Al-Kwarazimi. Hindu-Arabic math is base 10 and Al-Kwarazimi developed a really good method for doing math as well as inventing algebra. Base 10 spread with his methods. It looks like the Chinese were also using base 10 as far back as during the Shang dynasty. Meanwhile Europeans and their cultural descendants still use base 5 for ceremonial purposes (yes, even in MMXXV)

As an engineer life would be easier if we all thought in base 12, for my wife as a computer scientist life would be easier if it was in 2^n. 10 is a really convenient sized number for arithmetic and algebra though. Babylon was insane i genuinely can't imagine trying to teach children the name and order of 60 digits to the point of instinctive mathematical understanding

[–] moopet@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

No no, ALL MATHS is done in base 10.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago

What were digits 10 to 59 like in Babylonian?