Neo-Tech: The Philosophical Zero

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6. THE DISCOVERY OF THE ZERO

The zero is the mathematically defined numerical function of nothingness that is used not for an evasion but for an apprehension of reality. The "nothing" has been the exclusive territory of mystics and neocheaters. They thrive on "nothing", in nonreality, and create their mystical edifice of power and dominance upon "nothing" with "nothing". The zero is the only "nothing" thus far conceived that is nonmystical, i.e., reality-based. It is a tool, a mathematical tool, for dealing with reality, and as such is integral to the whole context of reality qua reality. After the Renaissance, the monopolization of knowledge became broken and scientific knowledge flourished owing largely to the propagation of this mathematical "nothing", the zero -- to the increased computational capability among common people that was made possible solely by the widespread use of the zero concept and its counterpart -- the place-value numerical system.

On the assumption that an Aristotelian-based philosophy rather than a Platonistic philosophy had dominated the Western world since the Golden Age of Greece, Neo-Tech predicts the following retrospectively (see "Neo-Tech Discovery", Neo-Tech Advantage #77, An Aristotelian Course of History):

As revealed in the second chapter, exactly as predicted above, the Phoenician navigators circumnavigated the world and discovered the American continent around 200 B.C., preceding Columbus and Magellan by 1700 years. Aristarchus' heliocentric theory of the universe was developed approximately fifty years prior to that circumnavigation. However, also around 200 B.C., with the rise of the Romans, Platonistic-based philosophies became increasingly more dominant and growth in science rapidly declined, except in Alexandria where Greek culture and science still continued to flourish.

What is implicit in this "retrospective forecast" of human history, however, is that a numerical system much like ours with the zero and the place-value principle should have been developed somewhere between 200 and 100 B.C., for the Greek numerical system was much too rudimentary to make the subsequent developments in science and technology probable. In fact, no matter what kind of numerical symbols people of antiquity might have adopted, logic dictates that their number system should have been the same as ours with the zero concept and the place-value principle. Since man has ten fingers, it is most likely that the base of their number system would have been ten (10). The computers of 60 A.D. should have employed a binary system due to the nature of logic.

Our modern written numeration, with the zero concept and the place-value principle, is such an ingenious, efficacious, and conceptually integrated system that no one who has ever considered the history of numerical notation or mathematics fails to realize its enormous profundity, significance, and power. For instance, consider the following addition -- the same addition by means of Roman numerals and of our Hindu-Arabic numerals:

Without converting the Roman numerals into our modern system the problem is difficult, if not impossible, to solve. And this is only an addition -- multiplication or division would be far worse. Roman numerals and most other systems do not lend themselves to written computation owing largely to the static nature of their basic numerals, which are in essence only abbreviations for recording the results of computations done by means of an abacus or counting board.

For this reason, before the advent of our modern positional numeration (the zero and the place-value system), the art of reckoning remained an exclusive and highly skilled profession. Indeed, it attests to the success wherewith the master neocheaters executed their destructive substrategy, specialization of knowledge, that the knowledge of reckoning remained so exclusive a profession. That master neocheating strategy created a lack of motivation for the advancement of knowledge, particularly of science, and its accompanying mathematical/computational tools. Thus, no progress was made in the field of reckoning in the Western world beyond Greek or Roman numeration. Roman numeration, particularly, was an intentional device to keep the populace ignorant and powerless, forever confined in the perceptivity-centered modality, in a mystical cave, by a mega-dose of neocheating.

Therefore, the discovery of the zero and the development of the place-value numeration had to wait for a less oppressive intellectual climate -- a flourishing business and commercial atmosphere. Such a climate took place in India between the first and fifth centuries A.D. It was during that time in India that the zero was discovered and the system of place-value numeration was developed, almost reaching to their fullest formulation by 500 A.D. Although in recorded history the place-value number systems have been developed four times (by the Babylonians, Mayans, Chinese, and Hindus), and the zero concept has been evolved three times (by the Babylonians, Mayans, and Hindus), none outside of the Hindus have devised such a complete system of numerical operation. Furthermore, none outside of the Hindus evolved the zero concept to the degree that it is used as the null-value in all facets of calculation.

Increased commercial/business activities during the first three centuries A.D. in India called for further developments in navigational technology and astronomical science, and for an evolution of a written computational methodology for recording the process of calculations that were employed in navigation, astronomy, and business. To accomplish these ends, development of a superior numerical system that lent itself to written computation became imperative. It was among those sea-dwelling navigator-engineer-scientist-businessmen who kept and evolved the lineage of advanced knowledge from antiquity that the place-value number system with the zero concept was first developed. The Brahman scholars, the Pythagoreans of the East, further evolved and perfected the system nearly to its present formulation. By using only ten numerical symbols while assigning one of the ten symbols, the zero, unique meanings and functions, they succeeded in expressing infinitely large numbers and making complex numerical operations remarkably more simple.

In Sanskrit (the scholarly language of the Hindus), the word for the zero is "sunya", meaning "void", and there is little doubt that the zero concept originated as the written symbol for the empty column of the abacus. The abacus had been used around the world since antiquity to provide a facile means of accumulating progressive products of multiplication by moving those products ever further leftward, column by column, as the operator filled the available bead spaces one by one and moved the excess over ten into the successive right-to-left-ward columns.

Number products in even tens (such as the number 20 or 30) leave the first right hand column empty (void). When expert abacus users had no abacus available to them, they could remember and visualize the operation of the abacus so clearly that all they needed to know was the content of each column in order to develop any multiplication or division. They then invented symbols for the content of each column to replace drawing a picture of the number of beads. Having developed symbols to express the content of each column, they had to invent a symbol for the numberless content of the empty column -- that symbol came to be known to the Hindus as "sunya", and sunya later became "sifr" in Arabic; "cifra" in Roman; and finally "cipher" in English.

Only an empty column of an abacus could possibly provide the human experience that called for the invention of the zero -- the symbol for "nothingness", and that discovery of the symbol for nothingness had an enormous significance upon subsequent humanity. The zero, the cipher, alone made possible humanity's escape from the 1700-year monopoly of all its calculating functions by the neocheating power structure operating invisibly behind their governments and religions. It was also the power of nothingness, the zero, that raised the curtains of science during the Renaissance, which had been drawn by the master neocheaters since 200 B.C. (It is significant to realize that the positional numeration with the zero concept had been implicitly employed in the operation of the abacus almost in its entirety, including the zero being the null-value. The Hindu numeration was the written translation of that operation.)

Even if the zero with the place-value principle and its computation-facilitating capability had been discovered by the Alexandrian Greeks, by Archimedes or Apollonius, for instance, it would have been banished or even lost when the emperors of the Roman Empire amalgamated the vast power of the priesthood with their already-established military supremacy. Historically, Roman numerals had been invented to enable completely illiterate people to keep "scores" of events occurring one by one. The more complex Roman numerals were those used by their superiors, keeping count by their fingers -- V for five (the angle between one's thumb and the other four fingers) and X for ten (representing one's crossed index fingers). Since one cannot see "no sheep" or "no person", the Roman world had no need for a symbol for nothing.

For science to evolve, there should be three basic socio-intellectual factors present: (1) a flourishing business climate that will provide an incentive to advance knowledge; (2) an explicitly defined Aristotelian philosophy that will provide the metaphysical/epistemological foundation or context for valid scientific knowledge and the ethical/moral basis for productive living; (3) mathematical tools, such as the zero with the place-value principle, that will facilitate the advancement of science. During the Renaissance all three of these factors were clearly present. Science did not develop in India after the discovery of the zero owing to the fact that no explicitly defined Aristotelian philosophy had ever been prevalent in India or had been known to the Hindus in general.

Indian philosophies from Hinduism to Buddhism, although they differed in various issues, all held that reality could not be known by reason and logic but only by a mystical union with existence called samadhi or nirvana, purported to be transcendental to reason and logic. They believed that reason and logic could take them only to the point where they could merge into existence through the cessation of the mind. In truth, their mystical union, samadhi or nirvana, was nothing more than a glorified perception or sensation. They inverted the epistemological order of human cognition, which proceeds from sensation to perception and perception to conception, and gave perception and sensation the ultimate cognitive status.

Therefore, albeit the Hindus perfected one of the greatest discoveries in human history -- the zero, they could not realize its cosmic function as a mathematical tool of science. Although it required a conceptuality-centered modality of consciousness to conceive of the zero, the Hindus did not possess a conceptuality-centered philosophy -- an Aristotelian philosophy -- to integrate the zero concept into a larger philosophical scheme so as to bring about its fruits. The zero, thus, had to wait for nearly 1000 years until the time of Leonardo da Vinci and Copernicus in order to bear its fruits and transform the human world forever.

Meanwhile, in the West, the Romans repeatedly burned the Alexandrian library, which as early as 100 B.C. was reputed to have had 700,000 manuscripts containing the wealth of Greek intellectual achievements. The library was first set on fire in 47 B.C. during the war between Caesar and Pompey (40,000 volumes were burned), set ablaze in 272 A.D. by a Roman emperor, ignited in 391 A.D. by another Roman emperor, and finally completely destroyed by the Muslims in 642 A.D. Thus, before the zero could reach the Western world around 700 A.D. via the Moorish invasion of Spain, the intellectual soil wherein this remarkable concept could have borne fruit had been destroyed almost completely by the master neocheaters and their neocheating strategies. The Western world had entered the Dark Ages.

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