Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

I'd argue that zero was neither invented, nor discovered. It was defined.

Mathematics exists only in the mind, and while we use mathematics to model reality, it's an abstraction.  If you measure the coastline of Florida, we find that we get longer and longer distances as we look closer and closer at the ragged line that we draw between land and water.  Similarly, as we get to the molecular level, we find we cannot determine whether a given molecule is part of the egg or part of the air surrounding it.  When we get to the subatomic level, it's all just probability clouds, and we're all Schrodinger's cats.

And if you stretch space thin enough, matter is spontaneously formed.  There is no such thing in nature as a zero, a one, nor a line, nor a circle. 

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.