The Zero That Kept Eating The Whole World

The history of mathematics is a fascinating one. No, no, I swear.

Before some plonker (Euclid) drew lines and shapes and couldn’t see them in nature so invented Geometry; before some hippie Pythagorean junkie diagonally-halved a square, then squared the half and called it trigonometry; even before the Sumerians graduated from finger-counting to writing-counting; there was a fundamental problem in mathematics.

What about zero?

That’s not a mathematical problem. That’s a God problem.

Ancient civilisations had been pondering the nature of existence since time immemorial. They wanted to answer the most fundamental of questions, namely “What the hell is going on?

Wild-haired mystics and biblical prophets kept coming up with the same answer. “Nothing going on, brah.”

That elegant simplicity they called God. The fundamental falling away of all illusions that anything was ever going on. There was only the world you create in your head when you forgot that nothing was going on.

They really believed that. What a flimsy word, “believe”. They knew that. They understood that, if you delve deep enough into the heart of the cosmic mystery, your boundaried existentialism melts into the infinite nothing. Yin becomes Yang becomes big, big bang.

In other words, you are only you so long as you forget that you have always been the entire universe. And the universe is whole and perfect in every direction forever. And also it doesn’t have different parts, because it’s all one part and it’s all great and perfect. And that’s God.

“That’s all well and good,” I hear you say. “What does this have to do with mathematics and zero?”

I say you now. When you start counting your corn to figure out how many bushels you’re going to need for winter, and you start writing down 1, 2, 3… some priest is going to come chop your head off for blasphemy. There is no 2 and 3, he’ll tell you. Just the One. Which is Nothing. So stop disrespecting our God you dead corn farmer you, without even a head.

Mathematics couldn’t get a word in, edgewise. Nothing kept eating everything it had to say.

It took the fellas pottering about over in the Indus valley to solve the riddle. In a roundabout way, at least. An interim solution, you can call it. Between bouts of Yoga and Kama Sutra. The solution was: ignore the problem and crack on. Invent a symbol and call it nothing, even though it is something.

If you introduce the concept of nothing as a symbol, say a 0, you could avoid the wrath of the over-zealous priest. You could acknowledge the magical overlord by writing a “0” at the top of every page, and the priest was powerless to stop you. You were free to count as many things as you wanted.

And so mathematics was born.

Indians begat Ptolemy begat Newton begat Schrodinger begat Netflix. The Indians didn’t draw the 0, we never developed the tools for the Renaissance. No Renaissance, no physics. No physics, no Netflix.

Today’s lesson? Next time you turn the tele on, be grateful there’s no longer a priest behind you about to chop your head off. And be sure to thank the Indians for that.