The discovery of 0 began in India. Around 2000 BC, the symbol "0" was used in Vedas, the oldest Brahmin literature in ancient India. At that time, 0 indicated that there was no (empty) position in Brahmanism in India. Around the beginning of the 6th century, India began to use the notation of fate.
At the beginning of the 7th century, the great Indian mathematician Graf Magpuda first explained that 0 of 0 is 0, and any number can be obtained by adding or subtracting 0. Unfortunately, he didn't mention the example of calculating with the symbol of life position. Some scholars believe that the concept of "0" was born and developed in India because of the philosophical thought of "absolutely nothing" in Indian Buddhism.
In 733 AD, an Indian astronomer introduced this notation to Arabs during his visit to Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, because it was simple and easy to use, and soon replaced the previous Arabic numerals. This symbol was later introduced into western Europe.
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First, related stories
There is no "0" in Roman numerals. In fact, in the 5th century, "0" was introduced to Rome. But the Pope is cruel and old-fashioned. He doesn't allow anyone to use "0". A Roman scholar recorded some benefits and explanations about the usage of "0" in his notes, so he was called by the Pope and executed the punishment of "zā". From then on, he could no longer write.
About 1500 years ago, European mathematicians did not know how to use the number "0". At this time, a scholar in Rome found the symbol "0" from the counting method in India. He found that with "0", it was very convenient to do mathematical operations. He was very happy and introduced the "0" method used by Indians to everyone. It was soon known to the Pope.
At that time, the power of the church was very great, far exceeding that of the emperor. The Pope was very angry. He rebuked that the sacred number was created by God, and there was no monster "0" in the number created by God in Rome (there is no evidence for this statement).
Anyone who wants to use it now is blaspheming the Roman god! So he ordered the arrest and torture of the scholar. In this way, "0" was banned by the Pope's order. Finally, "0" is widely used in Europe, but Roman numerals are gradually eliminated.
There is no "zero" in China's ancient digital calculation, but it is empty when it meets. For example, "6708" can be expressed as "┴ ╥". There is no "zero" in the number, which is easy to make mistakes. So later, some people put copper coins in the blank to avoid mistakes, which may be related to the emergence of "zero"
However, in ancient Chinese characters, the Chinese character "zero" appeared very early. But at that time, it didn't mean "nothing", just "bits and pieces" and "not much". Such as "odd", "sporadic" and "odd". "105" means that there is a score of 100.
But in ancient China, there was no such font as 0, only the Chinese font was zero. With the introduction of Arabic numerals. "105" is pronounced as "105", and the word "zero" corresponds to "0", which means "0". 0 was called Jinyuan number in ancient China.
Second, related issues
Historically, countries have always had two regulations on whether 0 is a natural number: one stipulates that 0 is a natural number and the other stipulates that 0 is not a natural number.
China's primary and secondary school textbooks originally stipulated that natural number set does not include 0. But outside China, most mathematicians stipulate that 0 is a natural number. In order to facilitate international exchanges, national standards stipulate that natural number set includes 0.
Therefore, in our newly published textbooks, according to "national standards", the set of natural numbers is called the set of positive integers in modern times. At the same time, we also use some mathematical symbols according to the national standards.
From the point of view of use, it doesn't matter much whether the set of natural numbers contains 0. As ordinal number, starting from 0 is the same as starting from 1; We used to say n∈N, now we just need to say that n is a positive integer (n∈N+).
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