Final Project

Formatting issues prevented inline placement of my essay, genres, and letter in Blogger. Please find my final project here.

Post 1: Partial Draft

Although I’m not ready to write a draft just yet, I thought I’d use this post to create some structure for my paper as well as collect and implement some of the research that I have done thus far. First, I’d like to discuss the foundation of my topic.

I read Charles Seife’s Zero: The Biography of Dangerous Idea. In this book, Seife addresses the importance of the number but also the politics and history of its birth. I’d like to open my paper by talking about this history to introduce the concept of the void and nothingness.

The first evidence of numbers is a 30,000 year old wolf bone with marks carved on it that was clearly used to count something (Seife 6). This indicates the reason that zero did not exist originally - there was simply no need for it. Early number systems worked similarly to tally marks, linguistically expressing numbers as repetition of their parts. For instance, a number like 6 would be “two and two and two.” However, as number systems developed, zero became necessary to use as a placeholder in the Babylonian number system that assigned value to numerals based on their place within a number, like our current one (13). Though this represented progress in zero’s development, it was still far away from having true value.

In the early West, zero faced harsh opposition. The Greeks learned their math from the Egyptians. Both systems highly emphasized geometry and as a result zero did not make sense. After all, there can be no zero length or zero area. Prominent scholars such as Pythagoras and Aristotle embraced these ideas, denouncing the idea of zero as absurd (40). Aristotle rejected nothingness in his model of the cosmos, which placed the earth at the center of the universe with many celestial spheres around it, like an onion. There are a finite number of spheres, with every outer sphere moving the one inside it. However, there must be something moving the outermost sphere. Aristotle stated that this proved the existence of God, denying that there could be a void far beyond earth. When the Romans took over Greece, this idea was adopted by the Catholic Church, extending its influence far into the future. The Catholics reinforced the idea that zero could not exist by stating that since God is omnipotent, there can be no nothingness.

When zero finally came, it came from the East. Hindus had embraced the idea for centuries, with their religion actually describing one of their gods as the embodiment of the void (65). In Arabia, algebra was created, using zero as a foundation for its operation. A man named Leonardo of Pisa brought the Arabic numerals used in algebra to Europe, and zero along with it. The idea began to catch on and break down the Aristotelian anti-zero policies of the Church. In the Renaissance, zero blossomed in art, when an Italian architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, took visual art into 3D by creating perspective and the vanishing point (an infinitely small point in a drawing in that has zero size but contains infinite space).

The enlightenment of the Renaissance allowed zero to take hold in the West, providing a new dimension for artistic innovation. This opened the door for the use of zero in an art form in which its presence is heard and felt: music. In music, zero, the void, nothingness, takes the form of silence. Silence, defined as the absence of sound, can often be just as strong of a force as actual notes themselves.

In Joseph Haydn’s string quartet from Opus 33, the piece appears to end, leaving silence. The audience begins to applaud, yet the music suddenly resumes. This repeats multiple times. Eventually, the piece actually does end, yet there is nothing but silence and tension in the room, as the audience does not want to be fooled again. In this way, silence is used to manipulate the minds and emotions of the listeners. Given the nature of the work, it is nicknamed “the Joke.” [http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2009/08/silence_is_golden.single.html]

Another piece that I’d like to discuss is John Cage’s 4’33”, in which the pianist walks onto the stage and performs absolutely nothing for the duration stated in the title of the piece. In the absence of sound, this work creates art. In the minutes of the piece, listeners are forced to hear the sounds that they might not otherwise listen to: the tapping of a foot, rustling paper, the wind blowing outside, even their own heart beating.

I’d also like to address the power of silence in music as an element that can be equally gripping and moving as a melody. I’ve selected the song “Gretel” by Snarky Puppy and the Metropole Orkest to illustrate this point [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoF7ZzMUrgA]. In particular, I’ll discuss the dramatic stops present shortly after 3:20. With the full orchestra and band suddenly ceasing to play, an unstoppable force is created.

The point of this paper, in abstract, will be to argue the importance and functions of zero and nothingness. After discussing the foundations of these ideas, I will focus on the use of silence in music as a contrast to sound, as a void out of which true tune is borne, as a space to generate creativity in a listener, and as a comparably forceful element as actual playing. Through this multifaceted exploration, I hope to prompt readers to reexamine their true conception of nothingness.

Post 0

I’m reading about math. More specifically, I’m reading Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife, a distinguished mathematics professor and writer. For those unfamiliar, the book chronicles the development of the mathematical idea of zero, along with its scientific and social implications.

In the beginning, there was nothing. Yet in mathematics, this truth is almost paradoxical: early systems lacked the numeral zero, meaning that early math was devoid of a numerical representation of nothing. In Zero, Seife describes the reason for this.

The first evidence of human math is a 30,000-year-old wolf bone that was found in Czechoslovakia in the late 1930’s. Inscribed upon this bone is a series of notches that are undoubtedly human-made. Though it is unclear what this object was used for, it was a tool for counting. Seife points out, however, that this sort of tool excludes a need for zero. At this time, most cultures had not a precise idea about any numbers at all, let alone zero. In fact, most only held a distinction between “one” and “many”. Even still, languages such as those of the Siriona Indians of Bolivia and the Brazilian Yanoama people lack words for anything larger than three. Instead, they use the word for “much.” This simplicity demonstrates the small need  for numerical precision in many societies.

The lateness of zero’s creation can be partially explained by a lack of necessity. Seife explains this, writing that, “You never need to keep track of zero sheep or tally your zero children. Instead of ‘We have zero bananas,’ the grocer says, ‘We have no bananas.’ You don’t have to have a number to express the lack of something, and it didn’t occur to anybody to assign a symbol to the absence of objects. This is why people got along without zero for so long. It simply wasn’t needed. Zero just never came up” (8).

When zero finally did come up, it ironically arose out of necessity. Early number systems, sans zero, worked similarly to tally marks. For instance, a number such as six would be linguistically represented as “two and two and two.” As systems advanced, they began to use the place of numbers as an indicator of values. For instance, the number 128 works as follows. 1 in the third place means one hundred, two in the second place means 20, and 8 in the first place means simply eight. However, without zero to use as a placeholder, this type of number system doesn’t work. A number with two eights could mean eighty-eight, eight hundred and eight, eight thousand and eighty, etc. The zeros in this number are what make it clear (88, 808, 8080). Thus, zero arose as a placeholder and came to have significance.

So far, I’ve been thinking about possible topics for the research paper. A section of the book that I found particularly interesting describes how Pythagoras, the famous Greek mathematician, believed that all numbers must be rational, or numbers that can be expressed as the quotient of one integer (...-2,-1,0,1,2…) and another. As he toyed with a monochord, a type of one-stringed instrument, he found that the most pleasing tones were produced when the string was pressed down so that the two lengths formed were in whole number ratios. After reading this, I began to think about the connection between numbers and music, specifically the number zero. This prompted a possible topic: the varying use and function of rest (silent space) in music throughout history.