The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero

by Robert Kaplan

I just finished re-reading, with many long breaks, this book. The first time I read it was on my 2006—2007 New Year holidays in Stockholm and Helsinki. This time I enjoyed it more.

Zero, nought, nil, null, zilch, cipher... So many names for something that isn’t there. We take zero for granted, but it wasn’t always the case. The ancient Greeks had no word for it — or maybe they did? Odysseus introduced himself to Polyphemus as Outis (Οὖτις), “Nobody”; three thousand years later, Prince Dakkar followed his example by adopting the pseudonym Nemo.

Kaplan brings together mathematics, physics, history, philosophy and literature in a marvellously poetic way. Just listen:

So long ago in Greece, when Socrates was young and Parmenides old, the latter laid down a challenge we have sought ever since to pick up. All you can think, he said, is: ‘Being is’. You cannot think non-being, nothing, the void. Using negation, he told us we cannot use negation. All we can think is ‘Being is’. We cannot think motion, change, difference, past or future, here and there, you and me, since each requires thinking ‘not’. We can only think: ‘Being is’. How easy to trivialize Parmenides by teaching him to suck eggs: you cannot outlaw negation and proceed to use it. But Parmenides was a poet, and you miss the music if you point out to a poet that his love isn’t really a red red rose. Parmenides wanted us to stop talking and listen. Like the background hum from the Big Bang, Being pervades. It fills and is the world.

Two millennia later Leibniz heard what he said and recognized with joy the fullness of things. There were no gaps, there was no void, the small became smaller but never nothing. Just as the numbers were choked to bursting with numbers, the world they described was so silted up with beings that it was a continuous whole, a garden whose every leaf was again a garden.

“A Natural History” of the subtitle is a bit of a misnomer though.

Claudius Ptolemy (2^nd century AD) used the modified omicron, ō as “Hellenistic zero”.

The Hindu–Arabic numeral system, complete with zero, reached Europe by the 11^th century.

In Mandarin Chinese, 〇 (Pinyin: líng 🔊) is a word for number zero.

More photos related to numbers and sea glass @ Shutterstock.