Zero: The key to understanding everything?

Before zero was a part of mathematics

we really didn't have a need to quantify nothing. Numbers were really just used as a measure of exchange

I'm going to give you this number of cattle in exchange for your wheat. And with the introduction of zero

we went from a very tangible way of thinking about the amount of something to an abstract way

And so by giving ourselves permission to sit in ponder about nothingness and to give it structure

to give it a value. We also give ourselves permission as a society

to think about hard things and complex things and sit in them and define them

and change them to solutions that then benefit us all. Part of what was revolutionary in this transition

to numbers being actual objects that we manipulate is that mathematics really became a universal language

Previously, numbers were really just used as placeholders. The way that four pens would be represented

would be by some symbol, and five pencils might be represented by a different symbol

But there was no way to take those two symbols and compare them to someone who had, say, five goats

or a four sheet. This was what was so unique. Now I can take the number four and apply it to anything and it represents the same amount When you add zero to that that then gives you the power to think about well if I got zero can I have less than zero

What does less than zero mean? And so so much was gained when we were able to harness the power of numerals and then use that to really expand and build on the field of mathematics

Thinking about zero gives us a framework to think about the absence of things

And it allows us a way to quantify that. It's now allowed us to build mathematical equations like E equals MC squared, for example, in physics

that represent the world around us. It represents what we see in nature in a way that everyone understands

Anytime we think about concepts like dark matter or, or dark energy or black holes, we've never been there

No, we observe the magnetic fields that are happening in space. And through our models, we're able to see that there's a gravitational force that we can't quite explain

but we can quantify through equations and through mathematics. And so to sit in void and understand emptiness in zero

mathematics is able to elucidate a world that we would never visit in person

It allows us to understand what's happening at the far reaches of our universe

without ever having gone there