Was watching Engineering an Empire on the history channel and the episode was covering the Mayan empire.
They were talking about how the Mayan empire “created” (don’t remember the exact wording used) the concept of zero. Which aided them in the designing and building of their structures and temples. And due to them knowing the concept of zero they were much more advanced than European empires/civilizations. If that’s true then how were much older civilizations able to build the structures they did without the concept of zero?
In: 395
There’s a lot of complex answers about mathematics and zero here, but there’s also one very simple aspect. You don’t need to know about 0 for the physics to still work. Sure, to write things down and solve equations, knowing about 0 helps a lot, but if you’re just doing something and figure out how the physics works in practice, you don’t need to know about the math behind it.
Like gravity. None of us know why gravity exists and acts the way it does, but that doesn’t stop us from taking advantage of it. We build hydroelectric dams and use gravity to move water through them to make power.
Other civilisations realised that if you put big rock on top of big rock in right way, top big rock stay where you put it. They might not have known why it worked, they just knew it did.
So while the Mayans may have worked out 0 and made figuring these things out much easier, other civilisations could still build fancy stuff just through trial and error or their own mathematical systems that others have explained.
There’s a good book, Zero, the Biography of a dangerous Idea. If you get a chance, give it a read.
Bit as has been pointed out, zero as a “number” really didn’t need to be applied until complex math happened. Back in the before times it wasn’t recorded that you had zero goats or that your neighbor owed you zero bushels of wheat. You just didn’t have any goats and your neighbor didn’t owe you any more goods.
But as society evolved manipulation of this data it became difficult to reconcile “nothing” quantities. Some characters should be used like any other number to hold a place for nothing. It makes that complex math juat that much easier
So yeah. And gonrwad that book.
The concept of zero is complicated – it was independently conceived by multiple different cultures/empires/societies over time – the Mayan empire didn’t *invent* it anymore than they invented holding sticks or eating cooked food
Zero meaning *nothing* has existed as long as people/animals have been counting things (a monkey or dolphin can understand the concepts of something and nothing for example, they know when there is no food and when there is some amount of food, this doesn’t mean they know the definition of 0 as we would)
zero as a mathematical concept (‘0’) however is more complex, as a base to start buildings has been used in ancient Egypt (the hieroglyph ‘nfr’ stood for ‘0’ as in the start of something, such as the base line before building a pyramid, or the empty storehouse before tithes were paid), and a similar ‘0’ had been used by ancient astronomers, such as Ptolomey, various Babylonians and other astronomers using a ‘0’ in their calculations to define the start/end of orbits and similar phenomena they observed
The problem is: could you define this as a mathematical use of 0 if you don’t also have the concept of negative numbers? (note that the concept of negative numbers was once considered ‘absurd’ in ancient Greece, because how do you physically have *less* than nothing? it’s impossible to physically have -3 apples for example – it was only with accounting that the idea of strictly negative numbers really occurred and later spread to advance mathematics which allowed various equations to be solved, which snowballed into advances in engineering and other fields)
Note that India’s use of ‘0’ as far as we know does NOT predate Babylonian use of ‘zero’ in written records, this doesn’t mean that it was not ‘invented’ independently in India, but the idea that India or any one place definitively can claim to have ‘invented’ 0 is slightly ludicrous;
while using ‘0’ can indicate that there were some mathematics and calculations occurring, this does not automatically mean one civilization/culture was ‘more advanced’ overall, nor does it directly correlate to advanced buildings or technologies, you need to have a lot of other things, and while the concept of 0 is a start, it doesn’t mean that they could integrate and define complex numbers – just that they had a concept for ‘0’
The ‘advancedness’ of any civilization compared to the European colonizers is a mix of some truth (they were different compared to a lot of Europeans and could do things with primitive tools that the Europeans didn’t know how) with a LOT of romanticism and propaganda (ie the ‘noble savage’ arguments, or the ‘arcadia-paradise-simpler-times’ or the History Channel ‘ancient aliens’ favorite)
You don’t need 0 to create ‘advanced’ buildings or works by itself, you can perfectly well make a very impressive Odeon or henge without using 0, and while you can’t construct the Empire State building without 0, you also need a lot of other things as well, not just understanding what 0 is
TL:DR having 0 does not automatically mean you are more ‘advanced’ as a civilization by itself or can automatically build better buildings, and the ‘invention’ of 0 can’t be pinned down to any one civilization
The concept of zero may have existed for thousands of years before the symbol for zero was invented. If you have no apples, then you have zero apples. The concept of no apples is something that would be understood by primitive people. The show you were watching may have overstated the value of zero.
What’s the Roman numeral for 0?
Theres a spiritual teaching of zero or nothing that i dont think i seen here yet. Its an ancient advanced spiritual teaching from a book called the kabbalah. If you add all numbers together, they come to zero. If you balance the universe out its supposed to come to zero too but apparently there’s actually some discrepancy in the universe that’s causing an imbalance between matter and anti-matter and shows as a temperature different in the CMBR that shouldn’t be there and is why this ‘reality’ exists at all. Before the big bang and whatever causes the discepency there was nothing. Zero is the sum of everything, -1 + 1 = 0, -2 + 2 = 0 etc and is nothing all the same. Infinity breaks down in a singularity to 0 or nothing. Nothing exists by virtue of its own properties so wasn’t created by anyone or anything just is. You can’t have less than nothing so nothing has to exist and by nothing existing then everything exists since nothing is the sum of infinity. Kinda mind fucky but makes sense right? Could probably have been explained better but you probably get the gist and could look into the kabbalah more yourself if you were interested. That’s just one tho. Similar concept is found in Eastern belief as the void, eternal nothingness, abyss (like the abyss that stares back?) Its interesting to think about 0 not being nothing, but everything, most would never come to that realisation on their own. Reconciles the whole something from nothing argument and breaks out the loop of, who made that? Like who made the universe? God. yeh but who made God? Nothing. Who made nothing?? Nothing. It just exists by virtue of there not being something. If there is no something then there is nothing, and how could there be no nothing, so isnt there something which is nothing?
while growing up i was told that wars were waged over the concept of zero. but nobody ever elaborated on that concept that appeared so interesting to me. i hope to learn more reading comments. thank you for asking this question.
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