ow!
I can't believe there is actually somebody interested in the history of the
number zero. Well, I'm glad you stopped by...
Most people may not necessary appreciate the importance of the number zero,
besides the fact that you would love to have a lot of them behind some other
numbers in your bank account. In fact, you would think that the number
zero is just like any other number. Nothing special about it!
Well, after you read through this very brief history of the number zero,
hopefully you would see it in a new light.
Believe it or not! The number zero that we are accustomed to, came
into existence rather late, around 200 A.D. (centuries after the great
Classical Greek Period, which can arguably be called the origin of the modern
mathematics). The number zero as we know it was conceived by the Hindus
from India. The Hindus were the first to recognize a mathematical
representation of concept of no quantity. It had not occurred to earlier
civilizations, even to the Greeks, that it would be useful to have a number
which represents the absence of any objects. Connected with this late
appearance of the number is the second significant fact, namely, that zero
must be distinguished from nothingness (null).
Undoubtedly it was the inability of earlier peoples to perceive this
distinction which accounts for their failure to introduce the zero. This
was very understandable because the difference is very subtle. You can
see the distinction of zero and nothing by considering the following
examples: A person's grade in a course he never took is no grade or
nothing. But he may, however, have a grade of zero. Or if a person
has no account in a bank, his balance is nothing. On the other hand, if
he has a bank account, he may very well have a balance of zero.
That was interesting, but you may think, " what else can someone
possibly say about the number zero, it is just a number..." Well,
zero is not just a number it is a very important number. With the
availability of zero, mathematicians were finally able to develop our present
method of writing whole numbers. First of all we count in units and
represent large quantities in tens, tens of tens, tens of tens of tens,
etc. Thus we represent one hundred twenty-three by 123. The
left-hand 1 means, of course one tens of tens; the 2 means two times ten; and
the 3 means three units. The concept of zero makes such a system of
writing quantities practical since it enables us to distinguish 11 and
101. Because ten plays such a fundamental role, our number system is
called the decimal system, and ten is
called the base. The use of ten
resulted most likely from the fact that man counted on his fingers and, when
he had used the fingers on his two hands, considered the number arrived at as
a larger unit. Because the position of an integer determines the
quantity it represents, the principle involved is called positional
notation. The decimal system of positional notation is due to
the Hindus; however, the same scheme was used two millenniums earlier by the
Babylonians, but with base 60 and in more limited form since they did not have
zero.
So the fact that the number zero had been elusive for thousands of years is
fascinating. Even more interesting is that zero had become the basis for
our current number system. Most people may not see or even care about
the importance of this special number. Aren't glad you stop by?
