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The oldest "0" in India for which one can assign a definite date

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Re: The oldest "0" in India for which one can assign a definite date

#21

Post by beloch »

An earlier use of zero (as defined in the article) for which one can assign a definite date was in 357 AD. The gotcha is that it's not the circle we're so familiar with. This is the first Mayan (Olmec) long-count recorded containing a zero, although long-counts showing a clear positional number system were recorded in the first century BC.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=TzrNgAsJY1MC&lpg=PP1&#38...

While the use of zero in India may have been influenced by earlier cultures (e.g. Babylon), it's pretty unlikely there was any direct contact that could have spread the use of zero to mesoamerica. Thus, positional number systems with a zero place-holder have been invented independenly at least twice in human history!

Re: The oldest "0" in India for which one can assign a definite date

#22

Post by contingencies »

chris_mahan wrote: post #7

Very interesting! Of course, reading "Those who can access JSTOR can find some of the papers mentioned above there" demonstrates once more that, alas, the digital divide still exists.

RIP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSTOR#Aaron_Swartz_incident

Re: The oldest "0" in India for which one can assign a definite date

#23

Post by foldr »

fusiongyro wrote: post #19
phaemon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At some point in medevial times each of these new numbers were considered the work of the Devil because they did not have concrete existance in the physical world. Really? Do you have a cite for this? It sounds made up.

Especially since under neoplatonic thought lots of things are considered more real because they lack physical existence.

I wonder if this is maybe a confused reference to the privation theory of evil? In Aristotelean scholastic theology evil is simply a lack of being (since goodness is one of the transcendental properties of being), and so there's a connection between nothingness and evil.

Re: The oldest "0" in India for which one can assign a definite date

#24

Post by foldr »

oz wrote: post #18
phaemon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At some point in medevial times each of these new numbers were considered the work of the Devil because they did not have concrete existance in the physical world. Really? Do you have a cite for this? It sounds made up.

I can't speak for math, but I know that a few centuries ago, certain musical notes were regarded as 'The Devil's Music': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone#Historical_uses http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4952646.stm

Well, both of those articles explain that this was just perceived as a dissonant interval which could be used a a musical representation of the Devil. The interval was likely avoided for essentially aesthetic musical reasons, and the Wikipedia article says that "...suggestions that singers were excommunicated or otherwise punished by the Church for invoking this interval are likely fanciful." Unfortunately the BBC article seems to be light on facts and heavy on stereotypes of medieval monks as ignorant religious fundamentalists.

Re: The oldest "0" in India for which one can assign a definite date

#25

Post by fusiongyro »

foldr wrote: post #23
fusiongyro wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since under neoplatonic thought lots of things are considered more real because they lack physical existence.

I wonder if this is maybe a confused reference to the privation theory of evil? In Aristotelean scholastic theology evil is simply a lack of being (since goodness is one of the transcendental properties of being), and so there's a connection between nothingness and evil.

I think ignorance is probably a simpler explanation, but thanks for bringing that up, I am not well-versed in medieval theology.

Re: The oldest "0" in India for which one can assign a definite date

#26

Post by swatkat »

Apparently, this article is about oldest known depection of symbol of zero (i.e. a circle), which is found in Gwalior's Chatur Bhuja temple.

But, zero in decimal place-value system[1] and zero's usage as a number[2][3] are much older.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lokavibhaga

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C4%81hmasphu%E1%B9%ADasiddh%...

[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmagupta#Zero

Re: The oldest "0" in India for which one can assign a definite date

#27

Post by coldarchon »

cpleppert wrote: post #16

I'm not sure what the article claims here. This is the first dated inscription but the positional arabic notation (with a zero like glyph) had been in use for at least 300 years earlier. If you consider other place value systems the concept of a 'separator' goes back much farther. This isn't necessarily evidence that they understood zero as a number as opposed to a concept. By 1000 in Europe they used a symbol as a p…

Uhm no. The zero could have only been born by a culture that had an understanding of nothingness, the Nirvana. In Middle-East all negative numbers including the zero were considered a work of Satan and therefore avoided. The shape of zero goes back to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros, the snake biting it's own tail and symbolizing eternity/infinity.

Re: The oldest "0" in India for which one can assign a definite date

#30

Post by KMag »

pfortuny wrote: post #8
dclowd9901 wrote: post #2

So if 0 wasn't a concept, you couldn't count to 10? I'm not sure I understand. I thought the significance of 0 was the recognition of an absence of existence. Just because numbers use 0 (270, 50, 20, etc.) wouldn't seem to indicate that it was understood at that significance...

No, the problem is not '0' not being a concept. There are two issues here, which are related but not the same. The conecpt of 'nothingness' is irrelevant to both: 1) Dealing with '0' as an ordinary number. 2) Using a positional number system, which requires a symbol or context for telling '1230' from '1023' and '1203', etc. One tends to think that solving the first issue leads to the second. Solving the second implie…

> Solving the second implies in some way having already solved the first, due to the nature of positional systems.

Untrue. (Edit: actually true). It works perfectly well to have a decimal number system using digits 1-10 instead of 0-9. For sake of notation, let's say A is the digit representing 10.

"A" = 10, "11" = 11, "19" = 19, "1A" = 20, "21" = 21, etc.

Edit: actually, I misread your argument. What you argued is definitionally true.

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