More on Zero in Russia

[Kevin M. F. Platt]

On the zero issue--my non-subscriber friend, who has written on this  
issue, has the below to contribute. Pls. respond to him directly. - 
Kevin M. F. Platt, UPenn

> From: "Eugene Ostashevsky" <ostashevsky at hotmail.com>
> Date: April 10, 2007 3:36:55 PM EDT
> To: kmfplatt at sas.upenn.edu
> Subject: RE: Fwd: SEELANGS Digest - 7 Apr 2007 to 8 Apr 2007  
> (#2007-30)
>
> Kevin, can you post this or send to Paul Richardson? I am not a  
> member and so my posting got rejected. Thanks.
>
> Hi, Paul,
>
> The answer to the question--"how did a pre-Petrine Russian express  
> the notion of zero as a number, in writing and in speech?"--is  
> supersimple: it didn't. The Greeks had no zero, the Romans had no  
> zero, the Russians had no zero as long as they used their variant  
> of Greek numeration.
>
> Zero appears as placeholder in Hindu-Arabic numerals; it is first  
> TREATED as number in using HA numerals for calculation (6-0=6); it  
> is first RECOGNIZED as a number extremely late... the Flemish  
> mathematician Simon Stevin at the end of the 16th century announced  
> that the ONE is the same numerically as all other numbers, and  
> called zero "the root of number." So it's not a number even here.  
> Pascal thinks you're dumb if you don't understand that 0-4=0. One  
> could do all sorts of incredible things in math before coming up  
> with the notion of zero as a number.
>
> Russians used the abacus to calculate--no one ever calculated in  
> Slavic numerals because, like Greek and even Roman numerals, they  
> are not intended for calculation but for setting down results. If  
> your numeration or calculation has no place for zero, you won't  
> understand why there should be a numeral that points to absence of  
> number.
>
> Zero entered Muscovy in the early or mid seventeenth century when  
> introduction of HA numerals allowed for calculating on paper. Zero  
> was called tsifra from the Arabic word for empty (sifr) and  
> Medieval / Renaissance Latin for zero (cifra), which gave English  
> both "zero" and "cipher". In Russian, already in the 17th century  
> the word for zero started referring to all HA numerals (tsifry),  
> also arithmetic (tsifir') and code (tsifir'). (Same denotative  
> spread as in Latin, by the way.) I read in, I think, A. P.  
> Iushkevich that in the 17th century the HA zero was also called  
> "on" or "onik," like the letter O, which in Slavic numeration  
> stands for 70.
>
> Anyway, before the seventeenth century there really is nothing in  
> any way like the concept of zero in Russia. And, of course, the  
> concept of number at this point includes only natural numbers,  
> nothing more.
>
> Eugene Ostashevsky
> NYU
>
>

Associate Professor Kevin M. F. Platt
Chair, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
745 Williams Hall
255 S. 36th Street
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

kmfplatt at sas.upenn.edu
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/slavic

Tel: 215-746-0173
Fax: 215-573-7794





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