History of Zero
HISTORY OF ZERO
This essay summarises the development of zero, as both digit and number, from early to modern civilisations. More willing to accept the concept of void, the Eastern civilisations are credited with the invention of zero. The Western civilisations, on the other hand, struggled for almost two millennia to finally accept zero.
The history of zero from merely a placeholder in place value systems (digit) to finally becoming accepted as a number has a very long history in Western civilisations. This was mainly due to their strong rejection of the concept of void. The Eastern civilisations, fortunately, were never so fearful of the idea of void, which was in fact strongly intertwined in their religion (Seife, 2000, p. 65). It is therefore not surprising that zero was first invented in the East. From the 5th century BC, the Babylonians had used zero placeholder in their base-60 number system (Boyer, 1991, p. 31). In this system, diagonal double wedges were used to represent empty placeholder (see figure 1). Using their base-20 counting system, the Mayans were the first civilisation whose counting system started with zero, not one (Kaplan, 1999, p. 82). Unfortunately, their isolation from other civilisations meant that their more sensible system never spread outside Central America.
Figure 1. Babylonian base-60 number system with zero placeholder 1 | 61 | 3601 | | | | 1x600 | 1x601 + 1x 600 | 1x602 + 0x601 + 1x600 |
The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, on the other hand, never used zero even as a digit, nor did they accept zero as a number. This, however, did not prevent them from creating sophisticated civilisations where the art of Geometry was invented. However, with the mindset appeared to be fixed in the dual properties of number and shape, their number systems were only capable of dealing with realistic objects such as triangles. Zero, however, represented void with no shape, hence could not be a number
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This essay summarises the development of zero, as both digit and number, from early to modern civilisations. More willing to accept the concept of void, the Eastern civilisations are credited with the invention of zero. The Western civilisations, on the other hand, struggled for almost two millennia to finally accept zero.
The history of zero from merely a placeholder in place value systems (digit) to finally becoming accepted as a number has a very long history in Western civilisations. This was mainly due to their strong rejection of the concept of void. The Eastern civilisations, fortunately, were never so fearful of the idea of void, which was in fact strongly intertwined in their religion (Seife, 2000, p. 65). It is therefore not surprising that zero was first invented in the East. From the 5th century BC, the Babylonians had used zero placeholder in their base-60 number system (Boyer, 1991, p. 31). In this system, diagonal double wedges were used to represent empty placeholder (see figure 1). Using their base-20 counting system, the Mayans were the first civilisation whose counting system started with zero, not one (Kaplan, 1999, p. 82). Unfortunately, their isolation from other civilisations meant that their more sensible system never spread outside Central America.
Figure 1. Babylonian base-60 number system with zero placeholder 1 | 61 | 3601 | | | | 1x600 | 1x601 + 1x 600 | 1x602 + 0x601 + 1x600 |
The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, on the other hand, never used zero even as a digit, nor did they accept zero as a number. This, however, did not prevent them from creating sophisticated civilisations where the art of Geometry was invented. However, with the mindset appeared to be fixed in the dual properties of number and shape, their number systems were only capable of dealing with realistic objects such as triangles. Zero, however, represented void with no shape, hence could not be a number
Great
Bibliography: 1. Boyer, Carl. B (1991) The History of Mathematics. 2nd Edn. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 2. Kaplan, R. (1999) The Nothing That is: A Natural History of Zero. London: Penguin Group. 3. O 'Connor, J. J and Robertson E. F (1996) The History of Calculus. Available at: http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/The_rise_of_calculus.html (Accessed: 30 January 2011). 4. O 'Connor, J. J and Robertson E. F (2000) A History of Zero. Available online at: http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Zero.html (Accessed: 30 January 2011). 5. Seife, C. (2000) Zero: The Biography of A Dangerous Idea. London: Souvenir Press. 6. Stewart, I. (1995) Nature’s Number. London: Widenfied & Nicolson 7 8. “The Genius of the East” (2008) The Story of Maths, episode 2. Directed by Robin Dashwood. Written by Marcus Du Sautoy. First broadcast 2008 [DVD]. London: BBC/The Open University. 9. Who discover the zero (2007) Available at: http://www.eduqna.com/Teaching/2429-1-teaching-3.html (Accessed: 31 January 2011). 10. History of Calculus (2011) Wikipedia. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_calculus.