Robert Kaplan

The Nothing That Is

1. IDEA 1

   Zero has a surprising history

   Kaplan tells the story of zero, showing that the idea of nothing took a long time to develop. Many civilisations struggled with how to represent absence. The journey took thousands of years.

2. IDEA 2

   Babylonians used a placeholder

   Kaplan describes how Babylonian scribes used a mark to show empty places in numbers. It was a placeholder, not yet a number in its own right. Context had to show the missing place.

3. IDEA 3

   The Greeks were wary of nothing

   Kaplan explains that Greek thinkers were uncomfortable with the idea of nothingness. Their philosophy made it hard to accept zero as a number. Philosophers argued about whether a void could exist at all.

All 8 ideas from The Nothing That Is →