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All through the course on the other hand all - and all parts of the smallest swing pivots zero. Visible on these devices to control the spiritual objects hidden in the law, we cycle around and swerves.             Zero       If you look at zero you see nothing; but look through it and you will see the world. For zero brings into focus the great, organic sprawl of mathematics, and mathematics in turn the complex nature of things. From counting to calculating, from estimating the odds to knowing exactly when the tides in our affairs will crest, the shining tools of mathematics let us follow the tacking course everything takes through everything else — and all of their parts swing on the smallest of pivots, zero. With these mental devices we make visible the hidden laws controlling the objects around us in their cycles and swerves. Even the mind itself is mirrored in mathematics, its endless reflections now confusing, now clarifying insight.   ... Why should zero, that O without a figure, as Shakespeare called it, play so crucial a role in shaping the gigantic fabric of expressions which is mathematics? Why do most mathematicians give it pride of place in any list of the most important numbers? How could anyone have claimed that since 0x0=0, therefore numbers are real?   ... Zero stands not for the closing of a ring: it is rather a gateway... Always beckoning, approached but never achieved...         — Robert Kaplan, The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero               Indexes/01