This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »
Zero helps us understand that we can use math to think about things that have no counterpart in a physical lived experience; imaginary numbers don't exist but are crucial to understanding electrical systems. Zero also helps us understand its antithesis, infinity, in all of its extreme weirdness.
Though people have always understood the concept of nothing or having nothing, the concept of zero is relatively new; it fully developed in India around the fifth century A.D., perhaps a couple of centuries earlier. Before then, mathematicians struggled to perform the simplest arithmetic calculations. Today, zero — both as a symbol (or numeral) and a concept meaning the absence of any quantity — allows us to perform calculus, do complicated equations, and to have invented computers.
Though people have always understood the concept of nothing or having nothing, the concept of zero is relatively new; it fully developed in India around the fifth century A.D., perhaps a couple of centuries earlier. Before then, mathematicians struggled to perform the simplest arithmetic calculations. Today, zero — both as a symbol (or numeral) and a concept meaning the absence of any quantity — allows us to perform calculus, do complicated equations, and to have invented computers.
@TexChik "Zero and its operation are first defined by [Hindu astronomer and mathematician] Brahmagupta in 628," said Gobets. He developed a symbol for zero: a dot underneath numbers. "But he, too, does not claim to have invented zero, which presumably must have been around for some time," Gobets added, whose organization is composed of academics and graduate students devoted to studying the development of zero in India.