As with colours, which I rambled about previously, we all quickly build up a subconscious alphabet of associations related to numbers. The process is slightly more artificial than it is with colour, because it comes more from the assumptions that underlie our languages and cultures. This doesn’t make it any less powerful however. Our minds are designed to think in certain ways, and as we grow, we quickly absorb layers of meaning that we didn’t really notice at the time. Of course, cultural acquisition of meaning like this provides the potential for great variation internationally in the symbolism of numbers -– but despite this potential, numerical symbolism is actually quite consistent world-wide, implying that the meanings we attach to numbers were probably first thought out a long time ago in our prehistory.
In the same way that black and white are not really colours, so zero is not really a number. It represents absence -– a token that quite literally makes something out of nothing. It is a comparatively recent invention; the earliest use of true zero as a number is found amongst the Olmecs (the central American forefathers of all the Mesoamerican civilisations) around 50BC, and it doesn’t properly arise in the classical world until around 300AD, in India. Even the ancient Greeks were uncertain of it as a mathematical term, many arguing that the concept had no meaning.
Zero by Eva the Weaver
Zero is actually a rather counter-intuitive idea if you think about it –- if there is nothing there, then why have a symbol or name for it? Common sense says that if I have two apples and then eat one and give the other to you, then all the apples are gone, and there is no point talking about apples any more. Zero, on the other hand, introduces the alien idea that zero apples remain, as if somehow the ghost of their presence lingers on in a potential. It is a subtle but incredibly powerful difference, and a vital one for the development of truly sophisticated mathematics.
Symbolically, zero primarily represents absence, and by association loss, unimportance, irrelevance and low status. However, it can also represent the idea of the infinite void, and by extension anything that is omnipresent. In Islamic and Kabbalistic Judaism, zero is the number of the perfect, infinite divinity. It therefore represents self-contained infinity -– perfect, unblemished and entire. It is endless, timeless, featureless and indistinguishable; zero apples is truly identical to zero cars, or zero universes. In computing, zero also symbolises the logical state of ‘False’, roughly equivalent to answering “No” to a question which starts “Is… ?”
Interesting post. I would assert, however, that prior to this post, zero references existed in the blogosphere to Islamic Judaism. Curious concept that.
You really ought to check Google before making statements like that, Joey… *grin*.
More to the point though, that’s really what the infinite void of zero is all about. It can contain — in its notional sense — every possibility and concept, past, present and future. Line-dancing ninja elephants in my fridge? Zero. Living people with nine heads? Zero. Like Ain Soph, the Limitless Light, it contains absolutely everything, and absolutely nothing.
The 3rd. Earl Russell had a thing or two to say about zero… are you quite sure about those conjoined nonuplets? When did you last check your ‘frig? Don’t these things keep you awake at night? Seiously though folks, I do think he succesfully differentiates 0 from OO. A bit scary to throw away Principia Mathematica, I understand it is considered pretty robust. I too find the “everything is nothing” notion appealling, but suspect I am guilty of laziness at best. My wooly thinking sometimes needs a lifebuoy. I think monkey-mind just about manages zero, but OO is of course a very much taller order.