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Why the number 0 was forbidden for 1500 years (Patreon)

Published:
2022-11-24 08:40:41
Imported:
2026-06
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Thank you for your generous support. This video would not have been possible without you. I hope you enjoy it and learn something interesting :) 

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Why the number 0 was forbidden for 1500 years

Watch over 2,400 documentaries for free for 30 days AND get a free Nebula account by signing up at https://curiositystream.com/upandatom. Once you sign up you'll get an email about Nebula! Hi! I'm Jade. If you'd like to consider supporting Up and Atom, head over to my Patreon page :) https://www.patreon.com/upandatom Visit the Up and Atom store https://store.nebula.app/collections/up-and-atom Subscribe to Up and Atom for physics, math and computer science videos https://www.youtube.com/c/upandatom Most of the material from this video was from the book Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife. 3 Paradoxes the Gave Us Calculus https://youtu.be/EbHqtENNnSY *Follow me* @upndatom Up and Atom on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upndatom?lang=en Up and Atom on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/upndatom/ For a one time donation, head over to my PayPal :) https://www.paypal.me/upandatomshows 0:00 Intro 0:46 The Time Before Zero 2:00 Humans Invent Zero 5:40 Zero's Exile 9:44 Zero's Reincarnation 11:05 Zero's Reign *A big thank you to my AMAZING PATRONS!* Jonathan Koppelman, Michael Seydel, Cy 'kkm' K'Nelson , Rick DeWitt, Thorsten Auth , Purple Penguin , AndrewA, Izzy Ca, Richard O McEwen Jr, Scott Ready, John H. Austin, Jr. , Brian Wilkins, Thomas V Lohmeier, David Johnston , Thomas Krause , Lynn Shackelford, Ave Eva Thornton, Andrew Pann, Anne Tan , Keith Lazarus, Tyler Simms, Michael Geer, Daniel Quinn, James Mahoney, Jim Felich, Fabio Manzini, Jeremy, Sam Richardson, Robin High, KiYun Roe, Christopher Rhoades, DONALD McLeod, Ron Hochsprung, OnlineBookClub.org, Aria Bend, James Matheson, Kevin Anderson, Alexander230, Michael Martin, Tim Ludwig, Alexander Del Toro Barba, Corey Girard, Justin Smith, Emily, A. Duncan, Mark Littlehale, Lucas Alexander, Tony T Flores, Dagmawi Elehu, Jeffrey Smith , Alex Hackman , bpatb, Joel Becane, Michael Hunter , Paul Barclay, 12tone, Sergey Ten, Damien Holloway, Mikely Whiplash , John Lakeman , Jana Christine Saout , Jeff Schwarz , Yana Chernobilsky, Michael Dean , Chris Amaris, Matt G , Dag-Erling Smørgrav , John Shioli , Todd Loreman , Dean Fantastic, Bernard Pang, Russell Brown, Oleg Dats, Max Isenholt, John Spalding, René Pasold, Simon J. Dodd, Tang Chun, Michelle, Richard Vallender, William Toffey, Michel Speiser, Rigid Designator, James Horsley, Craig Tumblison, Cameron Tacklind, 之元 丁, Kevin Chi, Paul Blanchard, Lance Ahmu, Tim Cheseborough, Nico Papanicolaou, keine, Markus Lindström, Steve Watson, Midnight Skeptic, Kyle Higgins, aeidolos, Mike Jepson, Dexter Scott, Potch, Indrajeet Sagar, Markus Herrmann (trekkie22), Gil Chesterton, Alipasha Sadri, Pablo de Caffe, Taylor Hornby, Mark Fisher, Colin Byrne, Nick H, Jesper de Jong, Loren Hart, Sofia Fredriksson, Phat Hoang, Spuddy, Sascha Bohemia, tesseract, Stephen Britt, KG, Hansjuerg Widmer, John Sigwald, O C, Carlos Gonzalez, Thomas Kägi, James Palermo, Gary Leo Welz, Chris Teubert, Fran, Robert J Frey, Wolfgang Ripken, Jeremy Bowkett, Vincent Karpinski, Nicolas Frias, Louis M, kadhonn, Moose Thompson, Andrew, Pedro Paulo Vezza Campos, S, Sam Ross, Garrett Chomka, Bobby Butler, Rebecca Lashua, Pat Gunn, George Fletcher, RobF, Vincent Seguin, Shawn, Israel Shirk, Jesse Clark, Steven Wheeler, Philip Freeman, Jareth Arnold, Simon Barker, Lou, Simon Dargaville, and Magesh. Creator - Jade Tan-Holmes Script - Zoe Cocchiaro Cinematography - Simon Mackenzie Animations - Tom Groenestyn Music - epidemic sound

Comments

Anthony Docimo

this was splendid. apologies on the belatedness of saying how much i enjoyed this. (there was a book about Zero by...Seife? very nice, though you explained it better, imho)

WIlliam Hartley

Very interesting video. But it didn't explore the difference between Zero and Nome. The path of zero from Babylon to Europe was a bit more convoluted. Muslins/Arabs carried 0 to Egypt. From there "nothing" spread west across North Africa as Islam spread out and became the dominant influence across the Southern Mediterranean Ocean coast and northern Sahara. From there, the Moors took 0 north into southern Spain, and the spread of Catholic Church. By the time introduced 0 to Europe and stuck his name to the eureka moment, 0 was already there, following the dual path of religion and trade. While the number "0" was a tool of the Devil to Greeks and Catholics, they still had the concept of "none" as a value. It was just really hard to write none in Roman numbers, so there was no symbol for it until the introduction of the linear time line where zero was written as an empty hole in the number line to represent none. The concept of "none" had been around since the "first baby" was born. It existed in agriculture, tribute (taxes), and business. A herdsman could lose his flock and have none of the animals left, he had no animals.

A. Duncan

You are an entertaining teacher. Amit Schandillia's thread - zero also covers the basic history of zero. Thanks for all you bring us...

Eammon Hart

Interesting video overall, but what are your sources for the introduction of it into Europe? Fibonacci may have helped popularize it, but he didn't introduce it. It was used by monks hundreds of years prior to Fibonacci including by Pope Sylvester II who introduced helped introduce the abacus to Europe. Also everything I'm seeing online about the Church condemning 0 as Satanic seems to be saying that it's a myth popularized by Christopher Hitchens and the closest thing to an actual condemnation is the fact that some Churchmen didn't like Arab cultural influence. Also the stuff I'm seeing online seems to indicate that Pisa adopted commercial use of arabic numberals due to the influence of Leonardo of Pisa in the early 1200's, but that it took centuries for broader Italian use to pick up, with the Medici's starting to use it in the 1430's. (https://www.accountingin.com/accounting-historians-journal/volume-19-number-2/the-introduction-of-arabic-numerals-in-european-accounting/ Source on the adoption of arabic numerals in accounting practices. https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3dpjpt/the_catholic_church_burned_everyone_who_said_zero/ Not particularly scholarly source, but example of a guy advocating the Church condemnation of zero and then admitting that he was wrong, there are also quara posted and blog threads about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Sylvester_II search for the word zero or abacus and it will bring you to the relevant material) That said I don't want to be too critical it is awesome to see this type of exploration of the history of math, which is sadly too often overlooked. So thank you for trying to tell this important and sweeping tale in such a fun and accessible way

John Schwenkler

The Church condemned the number zero? Was no bit of reason safe from those popish scoundrels! Anyway, I was somewhat torqued to see this blithe little piece of bigotry getting uncritically repeated again. Unlike a few pagan Greeks, the Christian Church never saw divinity in the numbers and had no known doctrines about number systems to defend. There's no shortage of genuine points of friction between scientists and the Church so resort fiction is hardly needful. Fun vid though. Jade has much stepped-up her production quality of late which inspired me to back her here. She looks luminous, her presentations are now more visually dynamic and thematically focused, and her energy (always engaging) finally has a new motive quality. IMO, she has overcome whatever it was that was holding her productions back.

Robin High

Great video. Good timing as well, as i have just finished reading a chapter in the book "Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them" by Antonio Padilla (2022) who has an entire chapter on "Zero" .. esp. interesting on the history of "0" with further info and examples, some of them described of this video.

Scott Ready

In the still of the morning I set upon a path in the woods. "Hoo Hoo," I heard and there on a branch, not too high up, an owl posed with eyes as big as saucers peered into me. Deep in my head, I heard the owl say "Think of nothing and you'll fall for anything." "Well." thought I in my pride, "I 'll think of nothing and leave it alone. The owl hoos at nothing." In my own way, I did kept nothing in my head and imagined how for each force there may be a counter-balancing opposite force such that together they cancel each other out and give the appearance of nothing happening. And then I thought of the different actions that might be going on all around me and how the commuting variables or those with no causal connection can be ordered any which way and one would not know the difference. The order in which events occur from one's perspective need not have an absolute meaning or be agreed upon by others moving through entirely different atmospheres. For operations that commute, a re-arrangement of the order in which the processes occur need not produce any difference in what one can measure. A zero commutator gives no information as to which comes first, second or third. When the same result can be achieved different ways, Feynman implores us to seek out all of the ways and add them together in a great superposition of paths in which nothing that could happen gets lost from consideration. A squirrel chatters on the path and then scampers away. The Void teams with virtual particles and processes that appear and disappear. Invisible microscopic things occur and disappear without a trace. The incessant murmurings have no ultimate rational order. From the void phantom particles can be raised and destroyed before one can make a direct measurement of them. For every creation and raising of a particle, we have a lowering operator ready to undo and annihilate whatever arises. The immense cancellations to zero need not be detectable. For every wave pushing its way up a beach, there follows a counter-flow pulling the earth into the sea. On a good day, nothing happens, a peaceful equilibrium occurs, a saddle point upon which Nature rests for a spell, until a disturbance from outside upsets the serene oscillations. The forested path shows me trees branching in every direction; tiny leaves catch the morning light and filter it for the mushrooms and beetles active on the forest floor. The underworld has pitter-patters and rhythms of its own in passageways below the spongy, crusty, noisy and exposed forest floor. I thought of nothing and imagined it being at the cross-roads of everything, a cross-road built like the clover leaves of super highways coming close to each other; yet nothing collides, everything minds its busy lanes and relative distances and velocities. On a good day, almost nothing irreversible happens at such a gravitational point of convergence. People fly on and off ramps while trucks mind their lanes and business. The net momentum at the intersection averages near zero in all three spatial directions. I thought of nothing and fell for everything.