The Legend of Zero

This is about the article of Jemy Gatdula in the Business World, entitled “The legend of zero(ing)”. The article which appeared in the said newspaper on its Jan. 18-19 issue is about “dumping” and its methodology employed for anti-dumping calculation called “zeroing”.

Dumping is said to occur whenever imports are priced lower than its export counterparts. Thus, resulting to cause material injury to a domestic industry producing the like product. Dumping is therefore an unfair trade practice.

However, I am not so much interested in the article's main topic, rather I find its two-paragraph long introduction quite more interesting. The writer's introductory piece narrates some trivial facts regarding the number zero or symbol “0”.

By the way, the word "zero" came via French zéro from Venetian language zero, which (together with "cipher") came via Italian zefiro from Arabic صفر, şafira = "it was empty", şifr = "zero", "nothing", which was used to translate Sanskrit śūnya ( शून्य ), meaning void or empty.

Below is the excerpt from Gatdula's article:

"Nothing' signifies the total absence of something. Zero is not nothing. It is a thing. More than just being a symbol, it is a number. Zero is a non-negative integer, followed by the natural number "one" and with no natural number preceding it. The ancient Greek mathematicians, including the philosopher Aristotle, considered zero a nuisance because it apparently disrupted the consistency or harmony of other numbers.

"The Indians, however, recognized something in the zero. Aside from the fact that it serves to distinguish numbers like 12 and 102, Indian mathematicians considered it as a whole number, a 'rational' number, a 'real' number. It is considered as an 'algebraic' and 'complex' number, as well as an 'even' number. One ancient scholar would put it mystically: to divide by zero is to give the definition of infinity."

So there. Zero has a value after all!

*Source: Gatdula, Jemy (2006), "The legend of zero(ing)", Business World, Jan. 18-19, p. S1/5.