The greatest mathematical inventions of ZERO and DECIMAL SYSTEM were
invented by HINDUS.
http://www.theindependentbd.com/post/181490
How India gave us the zero
The invention of zero was a hugely significant mathematical development,
one that is fundamental to calculus, which made physics, engineering and
much of modern technology possible.
Independent Online Desk/ BBC
In Gwalior, a congested city in the centre of India, an 8th-Century fort rises with medieval swagger on a plateau in the town’s heart. Gwalior
Fort is one of India’s largest forts; but look among the soaring cupola-topped towers, intricate carvings and colourful frescoes and
you’ll find a small, 9th-Century temple carved into its solid rock face.
Chaturbhuj Temple is much like many other ancient temples in India –
except that this is ground zero for zero. It’s famous for being the
oldest example of zero as a written digit: carved into the temple wall
is a 9th-Century inscription that includes the clearly visible number ‘270’.
The invention of the zero was a hugely significant mathematical
development, one that is fundamental to calculus, which made physics, engineering and much of modern technology possible. But what was it
about Indian culture that gave rise to this creation that’s so important
to modern India – and the modern world?
Nothing from nothing
I recalled a TED talk by renowned Indian mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik
in which he tells a story about Alexander the Great’s visit to India.
The world conqueror apparently met what he called a ‘gymnosophist’ – a naked, wise man, possibly a yogi – sitting on a rock and staring at the sky, and asked him, “What are you doing?”.
“I’m experiencing nothingness. What are you doing?” the gymnosophist replied.
“I am conquering the world,” Alexander said.
They both laughed; each one thought the other was a fool, and was
wasting their life.
This story takes place long before that first zero was inscribed on Gwalior’s temple wall, but the gymnosophist meditating on nothingness
does in fact have a connection to the digit’s invention. Indians, unlike people from many other cultures, were already philosophically open to
the concept of nothingness. Systems such as yoga were developed to
encourage meditation and the emptying of the mind, while both the
Buddhist and Hindu religions embrace the concept of nothingness as part
of their teachings.
Dr Peter Gobets, secretary of the Netherlands-based ZerOrigIndia
Foundation, or the Zero Project, which researches the origins of the
zero digit, noted in an article on the invention of zero that
“Mathematical zero (‘shunya’ in Sanskrit) may have arisen from the contemporaneous philosophy of emptiness or Shunyata [a Buddhist doctrine
of emptying one’s mind from impressions and thoughts]”.
In addition, the nation has long had a fascination with sophisticated mathematics. Early Indian mathematicians were obsessed with giant
numbers, counting well into the trillions when the Ancient Greeks
stopped at about 10,000. They even had different types of infinity.
Hindu astronomers and mathematicians Aryabhata, born in 476, and
Brahmagupta, born in 598, are both popularly believed to have been the
first to formally describe the modern decimal place value system and
present rules governing the use of the zero symbol. Although Gwalior has
long been thought to be the site of the first occurrence of the zero
written as a circle, an ancient Indian scroll called the Bhakshali manuscript, which shows a placeholder dot symbol, was recently carbon
dated to the 3rd or 4rd Centuries. It is now considered the earliest
recorded occurrence of zero.
Marcus du Sautoy, professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford,
is quoted on the university’s website as saying, “[T]he creation of zero as a number in its own right, which evolved from the placeholder dot
symbol found in the Bakhshali manuscript, was one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of mathematics. We now know that it was as
early as the 3rd Century that mathematicians in India planted the seed
of the idea that would later become so fundamental to the modern world.
The findings show how vibrant mathematics have been in the Indian sub-continent for centuries.”
But equally interesting are the reasons as to why the zero wasn’t
developed elsewhere. Although the Mayans and Babylonians (and many other civilisations) may have had a concept of zero as a placeholder, the idea
is not known to have developed as a number to be used in mathematics
anywhere else. One theory is that some cultures had a negative view of
the concept of nothingness. For example, there was a time in the early
days of Christianity in Europe when religious leaders banned the use of
zero because they felt that, since God is in everything, a symbol that represented nothing must be satanic.
So maybe there is something to these connected ideas, to the spiritual
wisdom of India that gave rise to meditation and the invention of zero. There’s another connected idea, too, which has had a profound effect on
the modern world.
The concept of zero is essential to a system that’s at the basis of
modern computing: binary numbers.
Silicon Valley, India-style
As you drive out of Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport towards the city centre, about 37km away, you’re greeted by several large signs stuck somewhat incongruously into the ground of rural India. They
proclaim the names of the new gods of modern India, the companies at the forefront of the digital revolution. Intel, Google, Apple, Oracle,
Microsoft, Adobe, Samsung and Amazon all have offices in Bengaluru,
along with home-grown heroes like Infosys and Wipro.
The sleek airport and shiny signs are the first indicators of
transformation. Before the IT industry came to Bengaluru, it was called Bangalore, and was known as Garden City. Now it’s Bengaluru and is known
as the Silicon Valley of India.
What started in the 1970s as a single industrial park, Electronic City,
to expand the electronics industry in the state of Karnataka, has paved
the way for today’s boomtown. The city now boasts many IT parks and is
home to nearly 40% of the country’s IT industry. Bengaluru may even overtake Silicon Valley, with predictions suggesting it could become the single largest IT hub on Earth by 2020, with two million IT
professionals, six million indirect IT jobs and $80 billion in IT exports.
It’s binary numbers that make this possible.
Modern-day digital computers operate on the principle of two possible
states, ‘on’ and ‘off’. The ‘on’ state is assigned the value ‘1’, while
the ‘off’ state is assigned the value ‘0’. Or, zero.
“It is perhaps not surprising that binary number system was also
invented in India, in the 2nd or 3rd Centuries BCE by a musicologist
named Pingala, although this use was for prosody,” said Subhash Kak, historian of science and astronomy and Regents Professor at Oklahoma
On 1/5/2019 3:23 PM, FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer wrote:
The greatest mathematical inventions of ZERO and DECIMAL SYSTEM were
invented by HINDUS.
http://www.theindependentbd.com/post/181490
How India gave us the zero
The invention of zero was a hugely significant mathematical
development, one that is fundamental to calculus, which made physics,
engineering and much of modern technology possible.
Independent Online Desk/ BBC
In Gwalior, a congested city in the centre of India, an 8th-Century
fort rises with medieval swagger on a plateau in the town’s heart.
Gwalior Fort is one of India’s largest forts; but look among the
soaring cupola-topped towers, intricate carvings and colourful
frescoes and you’ll find a small, 9th-Century temple carved into its
solid rock face.
Chaturbhuj Temple is much like many other ancient temples in India –
except that this is ground zero for zero. It’s famous for being the
oldest example of zero as a written digit: carved into the temple wall
is a 9th-Century inscription that includes the clearly visible number
‘270’.
The invention of the zero was a hugely significant mathematical
development, one that is fundamental to calculus, which made physics,
engineering and much of modern technology possible. But what was it
about Indian culture that gave rise to this creation that’s so
important to modern India – and the modern world?
Nothing from nothing
I recalled a TED talk by renowned Indian mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik
in which he tells a story about Alexander the Great’s visit to India.
The world conqueror apparently met what he called a ‘gymnosophist’ – a >> naked, wise man, possibly a yogi – sitting on a rock and staring at
the sky, and asked him, “What are you doing?”.
“I’m experiencing nothingness. What are you doing?” the gymnosophist >> replied.
“I am conquering the world,” Alexander said.
They both laughed; each one thought the other was a fool, and was
wasting their life.
This story takes place long before that first zero was inscribed on
Gwalior’s temple wall, but the gymnosophist meditating on nothingness
does in fact have a connection to the digit’s invention. Indians,
unlike people from many other cultures, were already philosophically
open to the concept of nothingness. Systems such as yoga were
developed to encourage meditation and the emptying of the mind, while
both the Buddhist and Hindu religions embrace the concept of
nothingness as part of their teachings.
Dr Peter Gobets, secretary of the Netherlands-based ZerOrigIndia
Foundation, or the Zero Project, which researches the origins of the
zero digit, noted in an article on the invention of zero that
“Mathematical zero (‘shunya’ in Sanskrit) may have arisen from the
contemporaneous philosophy of emptiness or Shunyata [a Buddhist
doctrine of emptying one’s mind from impressions and thoughts]”.
In addition, the nation has long had a fascination with sophisticated
mathematics. Early Indian mathematicians were obsessed with giant
numbers, counting well into the trillions when the Ancient Greeks
stopped at about 10,000. They even had different types of infinity.
Hindu astronomers and mathematicians Aryabhata, born in 476, and
Brahmagupta, born in 598, are both popularly believed to have been the
first to formally describe the modern decimal place value system and
present rules governing the use of the zero symbol. Although Gwalior
has long been thought to be the site of the first occurrence of the
zero written as a circle, an ancient Indian scroll called the
Bhakshali manuscript, which shows a placeholder dot symbol, was
recently carbon dated to the 3rd or 4rd Centuries. It is now
considered the earliest recorded occurrence of zero.
Marcus du Sautoy, professor of mathematics at the University of
Oxford, is quoted on the university’s website as saying, “[T]he
creation of zero as a number in its own right, which evolved from the
placeholder dot symbol found in the Bakhshali manuscript, was one of
the greatest breakthroughs in the history of mathematics. We now know
that it was as early as the 3rd Century that mathematicians in India
planted the seed of the idea that would later become so fundamental to
the modern world. The findings show how vibrant mathematics have been
in the Indian sub-continent for centuries.”
But equally interesting are the reasons as to why the zero wasn’t
developed elsewhere. Although the Mayans and Babylonians (and many
other civilisations) may have had a concept of zero as a placeholder,
the idea is not known to have developed as a number to be used in
mathematics anywhere else. One theory is that some cultures had a
negative view of the concept of nothingness. For example, there was a
time in the early days of Christianity in Europe when religious
leaders banned the use of zero because they felt that, since God is in
everything, a symbol that represented nothing must be satanic.
So maybe there is something to these connected ideas, to the spiritual
wisdom of India that gave rise to meditation and the invention of
zero. There’s another connected idea, too, which has had a profound
effect on the modern world.
The concept of zero is essential to a system that’s at the basis of
modern computing: binary numbers.
Silicon Valley, India-style
As you drive out of Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport
towards the city centre, about 37km away, you’re greeted by several
large signs stuck somewhat incongruously into the ground of rural
India. They proclaim the names of the new gods of modern India, the
companies at the forefront of the digital revolution. Intel, Google,
Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, Samsung and Amazon all have offices
in Bengaluru, along with home-grown heroes like Infosys and Wipro.
The sleek airport and shiny signs are the first indicators of
transformation. Before the IT industry came to Bengaluru, it was
called Bangalore, and was known as Garden City. Now it’s Bengaluru and
is known as the Silicon Valley of India.
What started in the 1970s as a single industrial park, Electronic
City, to expand the electronics industry in the state of Karnataka,
has paved the way for today’s boomtown. The city now boasts many IT
parks and is home to nearly 40% of the country’s IT industry.
Bengaluru may even overtake Silicon Valley, with predictions
suggesting it could become the single largest IT hub on Earth by 2020,
with two million IT professionals, six million indirect IT jobs and
$80 billion in IT exports.
It’s binary numbers that make this possible.
Modern-day digital computers operate on the principle of two possible
states, ‘on’ and ‘off’. The ‘on’ state is assigned the value ‘1’,
while the ‘off’ state is assigned the value ‘0’. Or, zero.
“It is perhaps not surprising that binary number system was also
invented in India, in the 2nd or 3rd Centuries BCE by a musicologist
named Pingala, although this use was for prosody,” said Subhash Kak,
historian of science and astronomy and Regents Professor at Oklahoma
SO, India gave us zilch.
On 1/8/2019 7:41 AM, Frank wrote:
On 1/5/2019 3:23 PM, FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer wrote:
The greatest mathematical inventions of ZERO and DECIMAL SYSTEM were
invented by HINDUS.
http://www.theindependentbd.com/post/181490
How India gave us the zero
The invention of zero was a hugely significant mathematical
development, one that is fundamental to calculus, which made physics,
engineering and much of modern technology possible.
Independent Online Desk/ BBC
In Gwalior, a congested city in the centre of India, an 8th-Century
fort rises with medieval swagger on a plateau in the town’s heart.
Gwalior Fort is one of India’s largest forts; but look among the
soaring cupola-topped towers, intricate carvings and colourful
frescoes and you’ll find a small, 9th-Century temple carved into its
solid rock face.
Chaturbhuj Temple is much like many other ancient temples in India –
except that this is ground zero for zero. It’s famous for being the
oldest example of zero as a written digit: carved into the temple
wall is a 9th-Century inscription that includes the clearly visible
number ‘270’.
The invention of the zero was a hugely significant mathematical
development, one that is fundamental to calculus, which made physics,
engineering and much of modern technology possible. But what was it
about Indian culture that gave rise to this creation that’s so
important to modern India – and the modern world?
Nothing from nothing
I recalled a TED talk by renowned Indian mythologist Devdutt
Pattanaik in which he tells a story about Alexander the Great’s visit
to India. The world conqueror apparently met what he called a
‘gymnosophist’ – a naked, wise man, possibly a yogi – sitting on a >>> rock and staring at the sky, and asked him, “What are you doing?”.
“I’m experiencing nothingness. What are you doing?” the gymnosophist >>> replied.
“I am conquering the world,” Alexander said.
They both laughed; each one thought the other was a fool, and was
wasting their life.
This story takes place long before that first zero was inscribed on
Gwalior’s temple wall, but the gymnosophist meditating on nothingness
does in fact have a connection to the digit’s invention. Indians,
unlike people from many other cultures, were already philosophically
open to the concept of nothingness. Systems such as yoga were
developed to encourage meditation and the emptying of the mind, while
both the Buddhist and Hindu religions embrace the concept of
nothingness as part of their teachings.
Dr Peter Gobets, secretary of the Netherlands-based ZerOrigIndia
Foundation, or the Zero Project, which researches the origins of the
zero digit, noted in an article on the invention of zero that
“Mathematical zero (‘shunya’ in Sanskrit) may have arisen from the >>> contemporaneous philosophy of emptiness or Shunyata [a Buddhist
doctrine of emptying one’s mind from impressions and thoughts]”.
In addition, the nation has long had a fascination with sophisticated
mathematics. Early Indian mathematicians were obsessed with giant
numbers, counting well into the trillions when the Ancient Greeks
stopped at about 10,000. They even had different types of infinity.
Hindu astronomers and mathematicians Aryabhata, born in 476, and
Brahmagupta, born in 598, are both popularly believed to have been
the first to formally describe the modern decimal place value system
and present rules governing the use of the zero symbol. Although
Gwalior has long been thought to be the site of the first occurrence
of the zero written as a circle, an ancient Indian scroll called the
Bhakshali manuscript, which shows a placeholder dot symbol, was
recently carbon dated to the 3rd or 4rd Centuries. It is now
considered the earliest recorded occurrence of zero.
Marcus du Sautoy, professor of mathematics at the University of
Oxford, is quoted on the university’s website as saying, “[T]he
creation of zero as a number in its own right, which evolved from the
placeholder dot symbol found in the Bakhshali manuscript, was one of
the greatest breakthroughs in the history of mathematics. We now know
that it was as early as the 3rd Century that mathematicians in India
planted the seed of the idea that would later become so fundamental
to the modern world. The findings show how vibrant mathematics have
been in the Indian sub-continent for centuries.”
But equally interesting are the reasons as to why the zero wasn’t
developed elsewhere. Although the Mayans and Babylonians (and many
other civilisations) may have had a concept of zero as a placeholder,
the idea is not known to have developed as a number to be used in
mathematics anywhere else. One theory is that some cultures had a
negative view of the concept of nothingness. For example, there was a
time in the early days of Christianity in Europe when religious
leaders banned the use of zero because they felt that, since God is
in everything, a symbol that represented nothing must be satanic.
So maybe there is something to these connected ideas, to the
spiritual wisdom of India that gave rise to meditation and the
invention of zero. There’s another connected idea, too, which has had
a profound effect on the modern world.
The concept of zero is essential to a system that’s at the basis of
modern computing: binary numbers.
Silicon Valley, India-style
As you drive out of Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport
towards the city centre, about 37km away, you’re greeted by several
large signs stuck somewhat incongruously into the ground of rural
India. They proclaim the names of the new gods of modern India, the
companies at the forefront of the digital revolution. Intel, Google,
Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, Samsung and Amazon all have offices
in Bengaluru, along with home-grown heroes like Infosys and Wipro.
The sleek airport and shiny signs are the first indicators of
transformation. Before the IT industry came to Bengaluru, it was
called Bangalore, and was known as Garden City. Now it’s Bengaluru
and is known as the Silicon Valley of India.
What started in the 1970s as a single industrial park, Electronic
City, to expand the electronics industry in the state of Karnataka,
has paved the way for today’s boomtown. The city now boasts many IT
parks and is home to nearly 40% of the country’s IT industry.
Bengaluru may even overtake Silicon Valley, with predictions
suggesting it could become the single largest IT hub on Earth by
2020, with two million IT professionals, six million indirect IT jobs
and $80 billion in IT exports.
It’s binary numbers that make this possible.
Modern-day digital computers operate on the principle of two possible
states, ‘on’ and ‘off’. The ‘on’ state is assigned the value ‘1’,
while the ‘off’ state is assigned the value ‘0’. Or, zero.
“It is perhaps not surprising that binary number system was also
invented in India, in the 2nd or 3rd Centuries BCE by a musicologist
named Pingala, although this use was for prosody,” said Subhash Kak,
historian of science and astronomy and Regents Professor at Oklahoma
SO, India gave us zilch.
India gave MATHEMATICS to the world.
On 1/11/2019 3:16 AM, FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer wrote:
On 1/8/2019 7:41 AM, Frank wrote:Guess you don't appreciate that most of us do not give a damn.
On 1/5/2019 3:23 PM, FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer wrote:
The greatest mathematical inventions of ZERO and DECIMAL SYSTEM were
invented by HINDUS.
http://www.theindependentbd.com/post/181490
How India gave us the zero
The invention of zero was a hugely significant mathematical
development, one that is fundamental to calculus, which made
physics, engineering and much of modern technology possible.
Independent Online Desk/ BBC
In Gwalior, a congested city in the centre of India, an 8th-Century
fort rises with medieval swagger on a plateau in the town’s heart.
Gwalior Fort is one of India’s largest forts; but look among the
soaring cupola-topped towers, intricate carvings and colourful
frescoes and you’ll find a small, 9th-Century temple carved into its >>>> solid rock face.
Chaturbhuj Temple is much like many other ancient temples in India – >>>> except that this is ground zero for zero. It’s famous for being the
oldest example of zero as a written digit: carved into the temple
wall is a 9th-Century inscription that includes the clearly visible
number ‘270’.
The invention of the zero was a hugely significant mathematical
development, one that is fundamental to calculus, which made
physics, engineering and much of modern technology possible. But
what was it about Indian culture that gave rise to this creation
that’s so important to modern India – and the modern world?
Nothing from nothing
I recalled a TED talk by renowned Indian mythologist Devdutt
Pattanaik in which he tells a story about Alexander the Great’s
visit to India. The world conqueror apparently met what he called a
‘gymnosophist’ – a naked, wise man, possibly a yogi – sitting on a >>>> rock and staring at the sky, and asked him, “What are you doing?”. >>>>
“I’m experiencing nothingness. What are you doing?” the gymnosophist >>>> replied.
“I am conquering the world,” Alexander said.
They both laughed; each one thought the other was a fool, and was
wasting their life.
This story takes place long before that first zero was inscribed on
Gwalior’s temple wall, but the gymnosophist meditating on
nothingness does in fact have a connection to the digit’s invention. >>>> Indians, unlike people from many other cultures, were already
philosophically open to the concept of nothingness. Systems such as
yoga were developed to encourage meditation and the emptying of the
mind, while both the Buddhist and Hindu religions embrace the
concept of nothingness as part of their teachings.
Dr Peter Gobets, secretary of the Netherlands-based ZerOrigIndia
Foundation, or the Zero Project, which researches the origins of the
zero digit, noted in an article on the invention of zero that
“Mathematical zero (‘shunya’ in Sanskrit) may have arisen from the >>>> contemporaneous philosophy of emptiness or Shunyata [a Buddhist
doctrine of emptying one’s mind from impressions and thoughts]”.
In addition, the nation has long had a fascination with
sophisticated mathematics. Early Indian mathematicians were obsessed
with giant numbers, counting well into the trillions when the
Ancient Greeks stopped at about 10,000. They even had different
types of infinity.
Hindu astronomers and mathematicians Aryabhata, born in 476, and
Brahmagupta, born in 598, are both popularly believed to have been
the first to formally describe the modern decimal place value system
and present rules governing the use of the zero symbol. Although
Gwalior has long been thought to be the site of the first occurrence
of the zero written as a circle, an ancient Indian scroll called the
Bhakshali manuscript, which shows a placeholder dot symbol, was
recently carbon dated to the 3rd or 4rd Centuries. It is now
considered the earliest recorded occurrence of zero.
Marcus du Sautoy, professor of mathematics at the University of
Oxford, is quoted on the university’s website as saying, “[T]he
creation of zero as a number in its own right, which evolved from
the placeholder dot symbol found in the Bakhshali manuscript, was
one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of mathematics. We
now know that it was as early as the 3rd Century that mathematicians
in India planted the seed of the idea that would later become so
fundamental to the modern world. The findings show how vibrant
mathematics have been in the Indian sub-continent for centuries.”
But equally interesting are the reasons as to why the zero wasn’t
developed elsewhere. Although the Mayans and Babylonians (and many
other civilisations) may have had a concept of zero as a
placeholder, the idea is not known to have developed as a number to
be used in mathematics anywhere else. One theory is that some
cultures had a negative view of the concept of nothingness. For
example, there was a time in the early days of Christianity in
Europe when religious leaders banned the use of zero because they
felt that, since God is in everything, a symbol that represented
nothing must be satanic.
So maybe there is something to these connected ideas, to the
spiritual wisdom of India that gave rise to meditation and the
invention of zero. There’s another connected idea, too, which has
had a profound effect on the modern world.
The concept of zero is essential to a system that’s at the basis of
modern computing: binary numbers.
Silicon Valley, India-style
As you drive out of Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport
towards the city centre, about 37km away, you’re greeted by several
large signs stuck somewhat incongruously into the ground of rural
India. They proclaim the names of the new gods of modern India, the
companies at the forefront of the digital revolution. Intel, Google,
Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, Samsung and Amazon all have offices
in Bengaluru, along with home-grown heroes like Infosys and Wipro.
The sleek airport and shiny signs are the first indicators of
transformation. Before the IT industry came to Bengaluru, it was
called Bangalore, and was known as Garden City. Now it’s Bengaluru
and is known as the Silicon Valley of India.
What started in the 1970s as a single industrial park, Electronic
City, to expand the electronics industry in the state of Karnataka,
has paved the way for today’s boomtown. The city now boasts many IT
parks and is home to nearly 40% of the country’s IT industry.
Bengaluru may even overtake Silicon Valley, with predictions
suggesting it could become the single largest IT hub on Earth by
2020, with two million IT professionals, six million indirect IT
jobs and $80 billion in IT exports.
It’s binary numbers that make this possible.
Modern-day digital computers operate on the principle of two
possible states, ‘on’ and ‘off’. The ‘on’ state is assigned the
value ‘1’, while the ‘off’ state is assigned the value ‘0’. Or, zero.
“It is perhaps not surprising that binary number system was also
invented in India, in the 2nd or 3rd Centuries BCE by a musicologist
named Pingala, although this use was for prosody,” said Subhash Kak, >>>> historian of science and astronomy and Regents Professor at Oklahoma
SO, India gave us zilch.
India gave MATHEMATICS to the world.
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 296 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 84:59:27 |
| Calls: | 6,658 |
| Calls today: | 4 |
| Files: | 12,203 |
| Messages: | 5,333,698 |
| Posted today: | 1 |