Robert Kaplan taught mathematics at Harvard, and this book follows the numeral zero from its independent inventions in Babylon and among the Maya to the one that reached the modern world, India's. Its documented strength is the Indian material: it lays out how the philosophical vocabulary of emptiness in Hindu and Buddhist thought, the word sunya, supplied the concept that Indian mathematicians, Brahmagupta chief among them, formalized into a number with its own arithmetic rules. Use it for the history of zero as a symbol and a number and for the philosophical vocabulary behind it. It is a popular history rather than a peer reviewed monograph, so a specific unresolved dating dispute among historians of mathematics needs a specialist source addressed directly alongside it, and no public digital edition of the book is confirmed on file, so no url is recorded here rather than one being guessed at.
Facts
Assessment
Reliability Tier2
A popular history rather than a peer reviewed monograph, but written by a Harvard mathematics lecturer and widely and favorably reviewed for its handling of the primary material on each of zero's independent origins. NotesA history of the numeral zero, tracing its independent origins in Babylon, the Maya world and India, and how the Sanskrit concept of sunya, void, became the Indian mathematicians' number.
Citation
AuthorRobert Kaplan
PublisherOxford University Press
Publication Year2000
Source TypeBook (popular history)
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Babylon directly: "from its independent inventions in Babylon and among the Maya to the one that reached the modern world, India's."
Claims Backed By This Source (10 claims)
This source backs 10 claims across the atlas. As facts: 8 well-attested. As cited relationships: 1 holds. Plus 1 entities citing it as a general reference with no single fact or relationship attached.
Disposition By Topic
- Sources, 8 claims: 7 well-attested, 1 holds.
- Numbers, 2 claims: 1 well-attested, 1 general references.
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