[anthk]

More like 1 = 0 + 1.

Read about Lisp, the Computational Beauty of Nature, 64k Lisp from https://t3x.org and how all numbers can be composed of counting nested lists all down.

List of a single item:

     (cons '1 nil)

Nil it's an empty atom, thus, this reads as:

[ 1 | nil ]

List of three items:

    (cons '1 (cons 2 (cons 3 nil)))

Which is the same as

    (list '1 '2 '3)

Internally, it's composed as is, imagine these are domino pieces chained. The right part of the first one points to the second one and so on.

[ 1 | --> [ 2 | -> [ 3 | nil ]

A function is a list, it applies the operation over the rest of the items:

     (plus '1 '2 3') 

Returns '6

Which is like saying:

  (eval '(+ '1 '2 '3))

'(+ '1 '2 '3) it's just a list, not a function, with 4 items.

Eval will just apply the '+' operation to the rest of the list, recursively.

Whis is the the default for every list written in parentheses without the leading ' .

    (+ 1 (+ 2 3))

Will evaluate to 6, while

    (+ '1 '(+ '2 '3)) 

will give you an error as you are adding a number and a list and they are distinct items themselves.

How arithmetic is made from 'nothing':

https://t3x.org/lisp64k/numbers.html

Table of contents:

https://t3x.org/lisp64k/toc.html

Logic, too:

https://t3x.org/lisp64k/logic.html