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| Image Source: See Link [2] below |
Some levity in light of current events that I will address in an essay on Sunday. RG
The number zero as we know it arrived in the West circa 1200, most famously delivered by Italian mathematician Fibonacci (aka Leonardo of Pisa), who brought it, along with the rest of the Arabic numerals, back from his travels to north Africa. But the history of zero, both as a concept and a number, stretches far deeper into history—so deep, in fact, that its provenance is difficult to nail down.
"There are at least two discoveries, or inventions, of zero," says Charles Seife, author of Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (Viking, 2000). "The one that we got the zero from came from the Fertile Crescent." It first came to be between 400 and 300 B.C. in Babylon, Seife says, before developing in India, wending its way through northern Africa and, in Fibonacci's hands, crossing into Europe via Italy. [1]
To mathematician Amir Aczel the most important number of all might just be zero. Zero—nothing—may sound boring, but without it our entire number system and the world of mathematics it enables could not exist. In his new book, Finding Zero: A Mathematician’s Odyssey to Uncover the Origins of Numbers (St. Martin’s Press, Palgrave Macmillan Trade, 2015), Aczel searches for, and finds, the earliest known artifact bearing a representation of zero.
The object, an inscription on a stone slab, was originally found in the 1930s in the ruins of a seventh-century temple in Cambodia. It was lost over the years and scholars feared it was destroyed during the 1970s reign of the Khmer Rouge. But Aczel finally tracked it down and reintroduced this important milestone into the historical record. [2]
Zero as concept can be credited to Ancient Babylon (nowadays Iraq), India and appeared in the New World with the Mayans [2]. This got us thinking about "big" numbers, changing our concept of things large, such as architecture, the cosmos and wealth; and things long, like time.
It's also a good excuse to embed a true "infomercial" from my youth, when kids had cartoons and an education in the advertisements:
Scientific American:
1. The Origin of Zero, Much ado about nothing: First a placeholder and then a full-fledged number, zero had many inventors, John Matson
2. This Mathematician Figured Out How to Solve for Zero [Q&A], Amir Aczel explored jungles and ancient temples to trace the history of the number zero, Clara Moskowitz
#P4TC Related Link
Zilch...Nada...and a little more..., November 28, 2011
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