From: Raymond Mercier (rm459@cam.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Dec 21 2007 - 10:56:59 CST
John H. Jenkins wrote
> BTW, if it's any consolation, Joseph Needham attempted to use a new
> convention in his _Science and Civilisation in China_ by using negative
> year numbers instead of BC/BCE. IIRC this has the side effect of adding
> a year 0 and making a one-year difference in all pre- AD/CE dates.
> Fortunately, his convention seems not to have caught on and CLDR is
> mercifully freed from the need to support it.
It is true that Needham in SCC took BC dates and tried to make them
'culturally neutral' by simply substituting a negative sign for BC, but he
did not have a year 0. Unfortunately this clashed with the astronomers'
convention where the the BC years are made 'negative', but with shift of one
and a year 0, so making the scheme algebarically consistent. For astronomers
the interval from BC 5 to 5 AD is 5 - (-4) = 9, which is correct, but for
Needham it would be 5 - (-5) =10.
Raymond Mercier
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