What is the significance of zero

And scientists just reported that even tiny bee brains can compute zero. Numbers like one, two, and three have a counterpart. We can see one light flash on. We can hear two beeps from a car horn. But zero? It requires us to recognize that the absence of something is a thing in and of itself. Perhaps a true zero — meaning absolute nothingness — may have existed in the time before the Big Bang. But we can never know.

In fact, we can use the concept of zero to derive all the other numbers in the universe. Kaplan walked me through a thought exercise first described by the mathematician John von Neumann. Imagine a box with nothing in it. Then, put another empty box inside the first two. How many objects does it contain now? This is the basis of our number system. Zero is an abstraction and a reality at the same time.

At this point in the story, you may want to take another hit on your bong. He then put it in more poetic terms. If you look at zero you see nothing. But if you look through it, you see the world. Once we had zero, we have negative numbers.

Zero also helps us understand its antithesis, infinity, in all of its extreme weirdness. Did you know that one infinity can be larger than another? The first uses of zero in human history can be traced back to around 5, years ago, to ancient Mesopotamia.

There, it was used to represent the absence of a digit in a string of numbers. Do you recall how Romans wrote out their numbers? The number 99 is XCIX. Placeholder notation is what allows us to easily add, subtract, and otherwise manipulate numbers. Placeholder notation is what allows us to work out complicated math problems on a sheet of paper. If zero had remained simply a placeholder digit, it would have been a profound tool on its own.

But around 1, years ago or perhaps even earlier , in India , zero became its own number, signifying nothing. The ancient Mayans, in Central America, also independently developed zero in their number system around the dawn of the common era.

When zero is added to a number or subtracted from a number, the number remains unchanged; and a number multiplied by zero becomes zero. From there, the usefulness of zero exploded. Think of any graph that plots a mathematical function starting at 0,0. This now-ubiquitous method of graphing was only first invented in the 17th century after zero spread to Europe. That century also saw a whole new field of mathematics that depends on zero: calculus. The Mayans used an eyelike character [ top left ] to denote zero.

The Chinese started writing the open circle we now use for zero. The Hindus depicted zero as a dot. The symbol changed over time as positional notation for which zero was crucial , made its way to the Babylonian empire and from there to India, via the Greeks in whose own culture zero made a late and only occasional appearance; the Romans had no trace of it at all.

Arab merchants brought the zero they found in India to the West. After many adventures and much opposition, the symbol we use was accepted and the concept flourished, as zero took on much more than a positional meaning. Since then, it has played avital role in mathematizing the world. The mathematical zero and the philosophical notion of nothingness are related but are not the same. Nothingness plays a central role very early on in Indian thought there called sunya , and we find speculation in virtually all cosmogonical myths about what must have preceded the world's creation.

So in the Bible's book of Genesis : "And the earth was without form, and void. Declare, if thou hast understanding. Nothingness as the state out of which alone we can freely make our own natures lies at the heart of existentialism, which flourished in the midth century. Sean Lake Sean Lake 1, 8 8 silver badges 18 18 bronze badges. Add a comment. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password.

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