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The emperor-pope who was "officially authorized" by God could require all believers to secretly confess their "sins" to his "officials" (ordained priests). He could also ordain universal adoption of his explanations of the causality of all human experiences, explanations that were most useful to him. The emperor-pope could tell his people how to conduct their lives, how to gain God's favor. The geocentric system was degraded to the notion of a two-dimensional flat world sandwiched in parallel between Heaven above and Hell below, and this cosmology put the emperor-pope and his "God" at the center of the universe. The heliocentric universe did not fit into his scheme, and thus was wiped off the face of the Earth.
The zero, like the heliocentric concept, had no place in such an intellectual obscurantism. Although it was first introduced around 700 A.D. in Spain, the zero could not find a way to reach through the darkness of the human mind to Europe at large. The zero as well as the heliocentric concept had to wait until the 11th and 12th centuries when producers and business again arose in Europe. During those two centuries Europe awakened abruptly, owing largely to a rapid population growth which had such consequences as the clearing of land, the development of cities, and the construction of larger churches. Prices rose, circulation of money increased, and, as sovereigns quelled feudal anarchy, commerce revived.
The revival of commerce necessitated more frequent international contacts and in turn favored the introduction of Arab science into the Western world. Universities were founded, arising from guild-like associations of masters and students at the cathedral schools. The western Crusade against Muslims in Spain resulted in the fall of Toledo (a Christian archbishopric in Spain) in 1085, and it was from this time that the Arabic versions of Greek science as well as Hindu numerals were translated into Latin, the most active period being 1125-1280. It was during this time that al-Khowarizmi's "Treatise on Cipher" reached northern Italy and southern Germany by way of Carthage in North Africa.
Two hundred years later, the zero concept finally diffused into the university system and became widely used in Europe largely because of its conceptual novelty. The zero was not only a tremendously powerful mathematical tool but also a catalyst that elevated the conceptual faculty of individual human beings to new heights. It is only the knowledge of the capability for unlimited multiplying and dividing -- and thereby ratioing -- and for evaluating relative experiences that is provided exclusively by the zero/place-value numerical system that could possibly enable individual human beings to know how to escape from the prison of ignorance which had been successfully established for centuries.
It was the zero, the mathematical nothing, that brought Europe out of the Dark/Middle Ages, out of the spell of mysticism, to the Renaissance, to a sunlit world of reason. Because the zero was indeed "nothing", the knowledge-monopolizing neocheating power structure whose entire existence was based upon nonreality, nothing, had improvidently overlooked it. Because it was a tool unlike the heliocentric theory or Aristotelian philosophy they could not comprehend its power and foresee the danger that it entailed for them. The zero, thus, became an essential and indispensable tool in the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. It also brought about Columbus' revised concepts of terrestrial navigation.
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