Less Than Zero

A stone inscription from Kotakapur in India dated from 686AD shows a circle meaning nothing, that is to say, zero. It’s one of the first representations of arguably the most important concepts underpinning modern mathematics, and therefore computers, modern science, engineering, economics and sociology. We might think that it’s always been there, but it hasn’t.

The Ancient Greeks had earlier started using the concept of a number that represents nothing. And those who believe that the Chinese started everything will be relieved that there’s evidence the Chinese were working the concept of zero and negative numbers as far back as the 4th century, though they didn’t have a symbol for 0 until the 13th century.
But the Indians beat them to it, incorporating the concept of 0 into mathematics around the 9th century. The Persian Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwarizmi said, in 976, that a little circle should be used ‘to keep the rows’ where no number appears in the place of tens. Arabs called this circle sifr or empty.
It sounds like cypher – ie nothing - and basically that’s what it is. But it also became ‘zero’
Apparently, the ancient Greeks were unsure about the status of zero as a number. They posed a philosophical riddle for themselves: ‘How can nothing be something?’
So what might the discoverers of zero and these Greek philosophers make of Ireland today, a place where the combined bank bailout and national debt needs ten zeros in a row to communicate its size?
That’s right, €270,000,000,000. Count ’em and weep. It ain’t nothing so it must be something. Yep, it’s something all right.
In the digital (ie binary) age, we may have moved beyond it now but those first zeros enabled humans to count beyond ten, to move beyond their fingers, to aggregate and to represent it all in a single table or grid.
Without zero, as well as maths and science and engineering and economics, we also couldn’t have had commerce or banking as we now know them. But ask yourself this – now that we know what we know, would that have been a bad thing?
And did those mathematical explorers conceive of a debt of over ten zeros in a row for a country with only six zeros in its population? Hardly likely.
According to French medievalists, in 13th century Paris a ne’er do well or worthless fellow was called ‘un cifre en algorisme’, that is, an arithmetical nothing. Well, we owe €270,000,000,000! How much less than nothing can we get?!?
Ah, but are we worthless? That’s the question.
We are in the strangest place. On the one hand the collapse – caused by the madness of speculators, financiers, builders, bankers, regulators and politicians alike, and, compounded by the disastrous decision by the Government of the day to guarantee the banks – has tied us to a stinking, sinking debt-ship of apocalyptic proportions.
On the other, an enquiry into things that went bump in the night in and around the award of the mobile phone licence to Esat Digifone has to date cost us almost €42,000,000. And it’s not done yet. Some people have yet to claim for their costs…
Tribunal lawyers grew almost as fat as the bankers grew in the Celtic Tiger years. They can’t be called cifres en algorisme can they? They were paid €2,000 a day!! The lucky bastards should be advertising perfume!!
What else can you do but laugh? The situation is so extreme as to be insanely amusing. Or, as the old blues puts it, you laugh just to keep from crying.
One sympathises with the new Government. They were left with a mess not of their creation and it will all take a long time to fix. And I guess it could be worse. We could be in northern Japan. At least our toxic waste will be sorted in a decade or so. Theirs will be with them for generations.
Or we could be in Libya – ruled (still) by a man said to be worth $140,000,000,000, but who begrudges the people the extras to buy bread… That’s right. He could pay our bank debt and still be filthy rich. Count the zeros. No cifre en algorisme Gaddafy, eh?
No, ha ha, we are where we are, here on the western fringes of Europe, buffeted by the hard winds that do blow, neither wholly worthless nor friendless but, thanks to the bungling and fumbling and greed of the shining stars of Celtic Tigerland, largely unloved.
Well, let’s get on with it.
Finally: some readers may have a second chance to discharge their democratic right in the Senate election through the Trinity or NUI panels. The Trinity panel has done us all great service over the years. Their last representatives were Shane Ross, Ivana Bacik and David Norris. Can’t argue with that and the probability is that we’ll get more of the same this time around.
Not so the NUI. Their last three representatives were Fergal Quinn, Ronan Mullen and Joe O’Toole. I know it’s a disgrace that DCU, teacher training college and IT graduates can’t vote for the Senate but that can’t be changed. So for now, if you have a vote, will ya use the jazin thing?