subject: Is "zero" an epistemological obstacle? [print this page] Is "zero" an epistemological obstacle? Is "zero" an epistemological obstacle?
Is "zero" an epistemological obstacle?
It is the human creative consciousness of existence that brings the terms as "emptiness", "hollowness", "nothingness", or "a big zero" to describe the ultimate, un-manifest reality of life. This consciousness is not but a true manifestation of the un-manifest absolute truth that takes sometimes a physical body to approach humans in the way they look like.
Zero to Void is as Body to Soul. The soul dwells in the body and lives within as similar to the "Virtual World" and "Greatness" that need a physical representation to live within.
As human body is a very complicated entity so is the zero because both of them are not but a symbol of a very fine self-aware ethereal substance.For this reason, "Zero" is an obstacle on practical mathematics. It produces paradoxical ideas, making reflections on different fields furnishing ambiguous answers.
Zero is an epistemological obstacle for it is:
A symbol for "nothing" and associated with "everything" at the same time
2. A basic symbol among the signs (known as meta-sign)
3. A name that points out a number of "no number"
4. Associated practically with "undefined", "infinity"
5. Becomes historical
So the zero represents the non-presence of the numbers 1,2., 9 and at the same time it produces the whole progression endless of the whole. It is at the origin of the number: as like for the geometry where the point generates the straight line so is the zero which is a basis of all numbers.
Being aware of such epistemological obstacles, math educators and teachers have to be aware to distinguish zero from the other natural numbers. It will be surely necessary to emphasize every time the peculiarity of the zero, not inserting it only in limit cases, but in the theory (see null angle, null solution,..)
A brief history of "Zero":
Zero was introduced by Babylonians and it was symbolised by a space between numerals. Then the Greeks were confused about it"How can nothing be something?" then the Indians used the zero as a number and not a symbol which lead to our famous look nowadays by the Hindu-Arabic numerals.. Zero appears also in the Incas and Mayan numerals.
