Challenges in Interpreting the Invention of Zero

Attempts to explain the importance of inventing zero and the application thereof in the context of the history of culture, philosophy, and the exact sciences bring to the forefront a range of problems in relation to the overlapping of challenging issues (and terminology) in science and culture. The symbol of zero is qualified both as a scientific discovery (or invention) and an empirically found solution for the satisfaction of certain practical needs of humans. Moreover, its invention is also based on references to certain religious and philosophical teachings. All this makes the explanation of this phenomenon extremely difficult, taking into account that explanations frequently connect fundamentally different fields that actually address completely different areas of research. Furthermore, when looking more closely into the materials related to scientific-technical and religious-philosophical explanations, we see that the emergence of zero (or the idea of ‘emptiness’, ‘nothingness’) on the religious-philosophical side does not at all indicate the existence of this phenomenon in exact scientific use, and vice versa. There might be a discussion about ‘emptiness’ or ‘nothingness’ within a specific historical period in a certain society, and at the same time zero might not show up at all in the mathematical theory and practice known to that society, as was the case, for example, in medieval Europe. Likewise, the introducers of zero in mathematical practice may theoretically disagree with the idea of ‘nothingness’ per se at the religious-philosophical level, as was seen in the Europe of the early modern period.