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Who Invented Zero?

A malicious software daemon has been continuously sending pings to my previous post 'Who Invented Zero?' which I originally posted on '2005.03.23'. The daemon got pretty annoying, so I decided to deleted the original post and make a new post out of it.

Today morning, my brother called me up and asked - 'Brother Who Invented Zero?'. I replied who else, its Indians. Later he told that in a discussion on NPR show they were talking as if it is introduced by Greeks. So I thought of asking Dr. Google and find out. Here I found an intresting link on the history of Indian Mathematics: Indian mathematics Index. The article says that the notion that Indians invented zero might be overrated. They gave illustrations about how babylonians and greeks used zero.

The historical record, however, shows quite a different path towards the concept. Zero makes shadowy appearances only to vanish again almost as if mathematicians were searching for it yet did not recognise its fundamental significance even when they saw it.

One thing for sure is that Indian mathematicians used sunya(zero) very extensively during historic days.

According to Saxakali

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.

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.

Check google search results for more infomation here.

A comment by a visitor 'Parag' on the original post:

To say that,
"Zero was Invented by HINDUS, but, The zero 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" is like playing down the invention of wheel and saying "The Wheel had to wait thousands of years until the engineers at GM(General Motors) used the concept to tranform the world by creating HUMMER.".
Whether the biased Western-World believe it or not, credit them or not, The Ancient Civilizations in INDIA were far ahead of their times in the science of mathematics and astronomy and have invented many, so called concepts, on which is based our current science and technology. Grow up guys.