A luddite questions the number zero…..

3rd November 2025

Do you think the number zero has made life better?

A random question clearly, but bear with me. 

We take the number zero for granted. But for a long time it didn’t exist. For a long time it was not a number. But today, it underpins mathematics. Without it advances in: algebra; calculus; algorithms; physics; engineering, todays modern technology would have been stunted and perhaps the world as we know it would look very different. 

To be fair zero is a demanding concept to grasp until expounded when it becomes an obvious necessity. This partly explains why over the ages many societies have struggled to conceptualise and then actualise it. Or to be more correct – to turn zero into a number.

‘Zero is in the mind, but not in the sensory world’. Mathematician, Robert Kaplan 

I’m going to skip the invention of counting but it is widely acknowledged that mathematics in ancient times across certain civilisations was capable of elaborate findings and uses. But we should also bear in mind our analysis of the past evolution of mathematics and its pervasiveness is still revealing itself. 

We are under the impression the Sumerians c5000 years ago inserted a symbol between Cuneiform numbers (a script used by many Eastern societies) possibly to indicate something missing. We have knowledge of the Babylonian approach (c4000 years ago) through surviving clay tablets also written in a Cuneiform script. These tablets depict sophisticated practices including the use of geometry and trigonometry. The numerical system utilised was a base 60 (apparently why today we have 60 seconds in a minute, an hour and 360 degrees in a circle). The Babylonians also created the first place value system. That is according to Wikipedia : ‘in which the value of a particular digit depends both on the digit itself and its position within the number’. 

But as with the Sumerians there was an implicit acceptance of something missing in the mathematical system prevailing though It is difficult to ascertain why either civilisation had this notion. Initially the Babylonians left a gap in their notations of numbers indicating a spot without a value. Later, society created a symbol to denote this ‘gap’. Given their competence it is difficult to believe they could not have ‘created’ the number zero if it had mattered to their progress. Perhaps it wasn’t seen as a significant impediment to their way of thinking. 

Roll forward to India where the concept of emptiness or a void was enshrined in Indian culture as Sunyata or Shunya, which perhaps explains why eventually zero was more readily co-opted. In 1200BC mathematics was employed in the Vedas (ancient sacred texts). Here the power of 10 was deployed to create very large numbers in word form. I have struggled to clarify but it seems a little later, around the 3rd century BC, The Brahmi script had symbols for the numbers 1 to 9 representing a place value system. Recent advanced analysis of the Bakhshali manuscript (thought to be the oldest surviving Indian mathematical text from the 3rd Century) noted India was also placing a dot symbol as a placeholder for something as previous cultures had done. 

In the 5-7th Century several mathematicians including Brahmagupta were instrumental in developing the dot into the number zero we know today and giving it a place in the positional system. That is the concept of zero was evolved from a placeholder to an actual digit. In his seminal work, Brahmagupta described zero as a number and laid out rules for arithmetic operations involving zero, such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication. (As an aside the Indians also perfected the decimal or base 10 positional system which underpins our modified approach today). 

We believe the concept of zero first moved East from India into China, before reaching the Middle East. c500 years after it had been created, it is thought to have made its way into Europe via Arab merchants, or some say via the Italian mathematician Fibonacci. Fascinatingly it arrived during the Christian crusades into peak scepticism of Islamic ideas and initially Florence banned its use. It wasn’t until the 15th century it was widely accepted across Europe.  

What I have laid out is a lineage of my best take from all that I have read. But I accept it is quite muddled and many civilisations and societies could take credit for theorising of the existence of zero. I’m happy to be corrected. As an aside the Mayans have also been hailed as developing zero as a digit in the Americas but the timing of when is unclear. 

So as I’ve cantered through from nothing to zero, I found it curious many societies had thrived without needing a number zero. So the question is why has explicitly defining it been useful for modern society? Supposedly aside from enabling an approach to computation that surpassed previous approaches in ease and clarity, it encouraged an openness as to how we could think about the world around us – zero has unlocked new fields of mathematics. From zero we could envisage negative and imaginary numbers as well as infinity as we were able to conceptualise things that did not exist in the physical world. It allowed more accuracy in the calculation of fractions and calculus, supporting Newton et al in their theories and paving the way for advances in physics, astronomy and computing to name a few. 

It is fuzzy imagining how we could manage without the number zero today. Astoundingly our modern day advances are built on this nondescript yet vital entity and as a foundational concept it continues to drive our ambitions. On the other hand many civilisations thrived without the need for defining it – clearly less machine dependant than us but still operating, functioning societies. So there is a little part of me, the luddite, which ponders and asks again. What would the world look like today if zero did not exist. Better or worse?