What is the origin of zero? How did we indicate nothingness before zero?

Answer 1

Bell, The Development of Mathematics, suggests that zero was independently developed by the Hindus, Babylonians and Maya. The best source known of is Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (Oxford, 1972; paperback). He reports that zero symbols are found in Alexandrian Greek documents.

Answer 2

The first evidence we have of zero is from the Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia, some 5,000 years ago. There a slanted double wedge was inserted between cuneiform symbols for numbers, written positionally, to indicate the absence of a number in a place (as we would write 102, the '0' indicating no digit in the tens column).

The symbol changed over time as positional notation, for which zero was crucial, made its way to the Babylonian empire and from there to India, via the Greeks (in whose own culture zero made a late and only occasional appearance; the Romans had no trace of it at all). Arab merchants brought the zero they found in India to the West, and after many adventures and much opposition, the symbol we use took hold and the concept flourished, as zero took on much more than a positional meaning and has played a crucial role in our mathematizing of the world.

The mathematical zero and the philosophical notion of nothingness are related but aren't the same. Nothingness plays a central role very early on in Indian thought (there called "sunya"), and we find speculation in virtually all cosmogonical myths about what must have preceded the world's creation. So in the Bible's book of Genesis (1:2): "And the earth was without form, and void."

But our inability to conceive of such a void is well caught in the book of Job, who cannot reply when God asks of him (Job 38:4): "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding." Our own era's physical theories about the Big Bang cannot quite reach back to an ultimate beginning from nothing--although in mathematics we can generate all numbers from the empty set. Nothingness as the state out of which alone we can freely make our own natures lies at the heart of Existentialism, which flourished in the mid-20th century.

Answer 3

The zero was invented independently by the Mayans and the Indians (in India). The Mayans discovery was lost but the Indian zero carried west to Europe by the Arabs, reached Europe.

There was no way to represent nothing before 0, Zero is an extremely important concept.

Answer 4

Zero or cipher was invented by Khwarizmi in the seventh century. Cipher in Arabic means empty. Khwarizmi invented the place value and when the place is empty that is it no number occupies it he placed the zero. Originally the hindos have a sign for the zero and that was the little circle. But the hindos did not use the zero to fill up the place value when it was empty.

Answer 5

zero was originated in india

Answer 6

i dont know much but 0 was invented by Aryabhatta an Indian Mathamatician

Answer 7

0 originated in India,during Gupta period.

Answer 8

nothingness=zero
:.zero=nothingness