ZERO - A Discovery or an Invention?

Numbers have always been intriguing to mathematicians. With different notations in different languages and systems, numbers have been with us since like forever. When talking about numbers and their importance, how can we forget about zero? Which seemed to be the case, if we go back in time as we all have heard, read, were taught that zero was added to the number system later, making it much younger than mathematics itself. Now, this is something to think about!

There is still so much speculation about the fact that when was zero actually invented(or discovered)? The first recorded zero appeared in Mesopotamia around 3 B.C. The Mayans invented it independently circa 4 A.D. It was later devised in India in the mid-fifth century, spread to Cambodia near the end of the seventh century, and into China and the Islamic countries at the end of the eighth. Zero reached western Europe in the 12th century.

Coming to our main question - Was zero invented or discovered?

Whatever we say on this question has no concrete proof because this is something that goes way back in history. But if we proceed with logic, can we find zero in nature? If we can, we already proved that zero was discovered and not invented. A tree bearing a single fruit(a tree bearing one fruit) and a tree bearing no fruit(a tree bearing zero fruit). Just like Newton discovered gravity(which was already present in nature) and named it, zero was already there and we just named it and gave it a symbol for its representation. Zero representing nothingness, void, nullity of something.

Looking with another perspective, Pythagoras’s famous conclusion - that in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides - was achieved without a zero. As was Euclid’s entire Elements. Seems like we were doing fine without zero. The invention of zero just added depth to mathematics and its concepts.

There are so many books written solely based on zero and recently I read this book- The Housekeeper and the Professor which made me think how the most common stuff that we use everyday could give rise to such controversial questions. In the book, the protagonist(who was a Professor of mathematics) agrees to the fact - “ A great Indian teacher of mathematics discovered the zero written in God’s notebook.” Contradicting his own statement in the book, he says -

“So you think that zero was there waiting for us when humans came into being, like the flowers and the stars? You should have more respect for human progress. We made the zero, through great pain and struggle.” - Yoko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor

Whatever it was- a discovery or an invention, zero made us accept the void and concept of nothingness. It will forever be one of the greatest discoveries or inventions for humankind.