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Is $0$ a natural number?

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2021-06-19 16:00:13

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Is there a consensus in the mathematical community, or some accepted authority, to determine whether zero should be classified as a natural number?

It seems as though formerly $0$ was considered in the set of natural numbers, but now it seems more common to see definitions saying that the natural numbers are precisely the positive integers.

In mathematics, there are two conventions for the set of natural numbers: it is either the set of positive integers $\{1, 2, 3, \dots\}$ according to the traditional definition; or the set of non-negative integers $\{0, 1, 2,\dots\}$ according to a definition first appearing in the nineteenth century.