Signifying Nothing: The Semiotics of Zero

by Brian Rotman

“A delightful analysis. . . . Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, . . . Rotman builds a viable thesis for the semiotics of zero via a thorough examination of Montaigne’s Essays, Shakespeare’s King Lear, the Kabbalah, and Vermeer’s paintings.”—Choice

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Mathematics, Theory, Anthropology, Linguistics

111 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have never really grasped semiotics. I get the general idea, one thing, the sign, points to something else. For example this "0" is a sign for zero, but zero as a concept outside of any particular zero (ok, bad example, but that's what this book is about, just take it for face value that is a something 'zero' in the world, and forget that the very idea of their being the existence of this 'zero' is possibly paradoxical to all ideas of reality). But why doesn't the concept of zero point to the mark "0"? Maybe this is pretty self evident, but in other examples the whole thing becomes a muddle, for me at least, kind of like a chicken or the egg question. As a result I have never given much attention to semiotics, it hurts my head and leads to unnecessary confusion, for me at least. Besides the whole thing reeks of a Platonism I'm not fully able to accept.

That said, there are large parts of this book I didn't quite get, but other parts that I enjoyed quite a bit and shed an interesting light on the current state of fiscal unease the world is feeling. The argument of the book is that the concept of zero entered into the European mind at about the same time that paper money came to economics and the vanishing point into painting. All three represent revolutions of sort in the way that the world was viewed. Sadly for me of the three topics being explored the one that I could grasp best was the effect of money, the math part being a little out of my depth, and the art part falling into my general ignorance of art (I know so little about art, and anytime I read about art in books I just nod along and take whatever the writer says at face value, I have no critical faculties in place, and with my guard down I feel really dumb. This is opposed to the math parts that I sort of understood but just never really stopped to do all the necessary thought I should have. I'm a terrible reader sometimes.).

The idea behind this book is that the introduction of this nothingness into the three different spheres created quite a stir at first, they were 'dangerous' ideas in some respect, and then something strange happened the nothingness inherent in each of these three fields reflected back on itself, thus creating a sort of meta-nothingness that altered entirely the definition of the original nothingness and as a result 'sanitized' the concept itself, but at the risk of unleashing ramifications that would be invisible (in art I don't know exactly how this works out, I'm sticking the cash money part that I can actually wrap my head around). It's this second move of the concept, the 'meta' zero-point that's quite interesting in the book, and I think that it kind of explains some of the difficulties I have of wrapping my head around the whole semiotics problem. What does it mean for a sign to point towards itself? What kind of problems does this entail? Why should we care about shit like this anyway since isn't it really just a bunch of post modern crap? I would like to think so, but the 'postmodern' turns in the examples Rotman gives all happened in a time when Modernity wasn't even getting ready to rear it's difficult little head.

In the money example what happens is that paper money is introduced. Paper money itself is nothing, rather it's a sign that points towards something, that would be some kind of metal that has been granted the authority of having value that can be used to trade for 'goods'. The metal itself has no inherent value, rather society decided that certain things found in the ground were valuable and had the purpose of being hoarded, spent, lost, won, earned, etc. Already the stuff found in the ground is a sign towards something that doesn't really exist except in the collective acceptance that this thing you dug up is worth something. (For example, if everyone but one guy woke up one day and decided that gold wasn't worth anything, that it was as good as any stone you see on the ground (this is at a time when gold was used as a standard of currency), and everyone now accepted this then the one person who still believed that his gold was worth something would come to a rude awakening when he tried to pass it off to buy some eggs in the morning. It would be like going to the store with some string and trying to change it in for something.) So in a way gold (or silver, or bronze, of whatever you want to insert here), is a wide spread and all pervasive delusion that society in it's entirety accepts so that things will run smoothly. Now if you think about it that way the stuff from the ground is already on shaky ground, it's value proscribed by delusions. Now add a piece of paper that allows the bearer to trade in these things from the ground, that they don't actually have access to, but which are held by the place that issued the piece of paper. Now make another move where the pieces of paper aren't even pointing anymore to a one to one ratio with the gold, but which fluctuate in it's value based on a while variety of variables and at the same time, make the paper money the standard, and you start to see the sign of paper money pointing towards something tangible and outside of itself to in general acceptance pointing only towards other paper money. This pointing towards itself is the 'meta' move.

This isn't really anything to be worried about, but eventually society forgets that the money is pointing ultimately towards something outside of itself, and behold it's enough to make it permanetly point towards itself (such as what happened when paper money was no longer backed by gold or silver, such as the case in the present day). Now money, which was originally only a sign points only towards itself. The results of this can be seen in a whole slew of economic problems that are occurring today.

Looking at a problem in this way is using a postmodern / deconstruction approach, but what Rotman argues is that the moves are tied up in the very notion of zero.

This review is sort of a whole bunch of nonsense, and I'm realizing now that I completely missed explaining how he connected paper money to zero, but think of it as the cliff hanger that will make you want to seek out the book and read it. Seriously it's an interesting book, and it utilizes many different disciplines to show the effect that zero has had on both society and on the concept itself.

[Melissa Rudder · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Signifying Nothing, Brian Rotman looks at the unique position of "nothing" and "zero" in culture by studying the introduction of the zero in mathematics, the vanishing point in Western art, and imaginary money in economics. While an interesting look at the cultural struggles with the concept of zero and nothing--for instance, I learned that adherents to the Hebrew ex nihilo view of creation accept it while those adhering to a Greek view of creation struggle with the frightening (and blasphemous) thought of the void, and I learned that paper money took its primordial form in IOUs issued by feudal lords--the book is, first and foremost, a study of how nothing, no-thing, the absence of things, has been represented in speech, writing, exchange, and art. Zero (and its art and economic counterparts), he argues, is both a sign (representing nothing) and a metasign (representing the absence of other signs). The introduction of this metasign led to other, crazier metasigns. Like variables in math. Or paintings without vanishing points that instead depict painters painting. And eventually we end up discussing xenomoney, but I'd pretty much gone cross-eyed by that point. And somewhere in there, the metasigns created metasubjects (that's the painter painting a painter). And the signs which lead to other signs couldn't possibly have all been preceded by things because the painters paint scenes that they can't see and the dollar no longer represents a certain amount of gold and it's all out of control with Derrida running behind the slippery slippery signifiers shrieking, "I told you so!"

And that's my review. Confused? Me too. But I think I did learn something about nothing.

[Zoonanism · Rating 2 out of 5]

How are analogous relations different from homologous? Does one indicate comparable patterns and the other identical? If so this essay would have been less odd if Brian Rotman had made no claims for homology. With some effort one may find loose parallels between the advent of perspectival painting , use of paper money and the replacement of roman numerals. But they are not indicative of some major and common coding shift in the respective regimes of signs as Rotman claims.

There is a term he uses often which I find very annoying, namely : 'anteriority of objects to signs'
Use of zero and a shift to Hindu numerals in the West, he asserts disrupts this order. I just do not see how? The argument is that this shift enables 'representations' of large 'uncountable' quantities. Well maybe it facilitates it but only because there already would been an 'anterior' need to perform such counts. But there is the additional assertion that the place of zero within a series stands for and is the sign of 'he who counts', a novel feature, presumably because such a subject who initiates the count is impossible to imagine when one deals with Roman numerals?!! Furthermore if you agree with this assertion you'd too easily see how around the same time western painting underwent a similar shift which disrupted the order of anteriority, via the use of perspective. The vanishing point in the perspectival painting stands for the painter's point of view whose absence is like the zero sign, which through signifying nothing is the generating point of the count.

For Rotman, Roman numerals like Icon Paintings and use of gold in trade are relics of a kind Platonism, which abhorred and concealed absence. But absence once represented yields such coding possibilities within each regime that centuries down the line we get, financial markets in futures and other fictitious instruments being orders of magnitude larger than any underlying material economy, or Derrida alerting us of the impossibility of ever ascertaining meaning as texts defer perpetually, and there being no reality which does not contain signs/text, interpretation can't ever cease. Meaning cannot be reached just as modern money can never be redeemed in either gold or some unit of platonic worth.

These links are fun, but they are not essential paper money has existed in different cultures which have exercised non-perspectival painting, and Indians themselves who came up with zero lived for centuries without any inflationary trouble either in their trade or hermeneutical practice.

This meditation on the void, though cute, can be a-voided

[Guilherme Tomishiyo · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is the meaning of zero, as a sign? What starts as a seemingly innocuous question reveals itself as a rich multi valued phenomenon, with parallels in arts and economy. Rotman's ideia is that zero is itself a sign — a number among other numbers — as well as a meta-sign: the sign which marks the absence of the 1,2,3...9 Hindu numeral signs. This dual character of zero ensues an instability in the code: if a number is understood as an icon of a supposed pre-existing unit, a code for the act of counting, what does the absence of a counting supposedly mean? The presence of this sign causes the emergency of its semiotic closure - the algebraic variable - which is a symbol that ranges over all possible numbers. Even when a number is by no means actual by any practical human need, it can be signified by the algebraic variable. The zero and its closure, then, destroy the ideia of anteriority, that is, the very ideia that numbers signify something external to themselves. They start existing not as symbols for some pre-existing unit which is accounted for a subject who counts, but now have an intrinsic meaning, created by the very existence of the code system.

In arts, the parallels are the vanishing point (isomorphic to zero) and the punctum (isomorphic to the algebraic variable) and in economy the so called "imaginary money", the promissory notes that would certificate a given bear some amount of gold (isomorphic to zero) and the paper money (isomorphic to the algebraic variable).

The major intelectual gain one can get from reading this essay is understanding the naturalization of seemingly abstract phenomenon in the modern world, for instance, the global money order. Money in the modern world does not signify some external, "intrinsically valuable" thing, as it was the case when it was rooted in a gold assurance. But the very stability and naturalization of such kind of system can be somewhat mysterious. I think this book helps explaining it. Of course, once you notice the pattern, you might see it everywhere. From literature, to movies and even science. Another interesting point is understanding the cultural resistance that zero provoked. I always heard that European intelectuality took an issue with zero for a long time, but never quite understood why so. Rotman does a good job explaining why Medieval Europe mindset was not a fertile ground for this ideia.

Rotman's work is delightfully written. He displays a fantastic command of the English language; has a vast knowledge across many different fields and is able to argue convincingly for all his major points. The fact that the book is quite direct and succinct is another remarkable quality. A very good read for people interested in philosophy and mathematics.

[Mike Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Might not be quite what you expect. Don't go looking for symbology or iconography or any of that jazz. This one is about the concept of zero from its historical introduction into western thought. Included are areas relating to the optical vanishing point and "imaginary money". The historicity of zero is traced, from its European introduction, to the the 1970's with the United States moving the US Dollar away from the Gold Standard.

[Justine Cheng · Rating 3 out of 5]

The individual case studies are interesting, but their relation to one another is unconvincing. As another reviewer notes, this is essentially an abuse of Foucauldian archeology to establish a series of homologies between semiotic systems across different times and fields. Also, despite claiming not to be invested in the notion of Foucauldian epistemes he seems to basically suggest at the end that we are in the epitome of zero, at least insofar as zero functions as a kind of semiotic or discursive limit of signfication, an original absence/presence.

[rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is confusing but definitely brain fodder I would say that it’s important to note that the cover has a guys butt on it so if you gave it as a gift it would be really awkward

[Shulamith Farhi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful and richly illustrated jaunt through the cultural history of zero, tracking parallel developments in mathematics, painting and economics. The central thesis of the text, that the introduction of zero creates a meta-position that indicates the absence of other signs, is mostly persuasive, though Rotman's refutation of Derrida's arguments against meta-language is rushed at best. The sensitive discussions of theology, ranging from the role of the kabbalistic sephirah Keter as the theosophical zero to Augustine's condemnation of nothing as the Devil are fascinating. The highlight of the book is the close reading of King Lear as an index of an emerging capitalist order; for Rotman "the play is Shakespeare's encounter with the empty doubleness of 'nothing', with the spectre that he saw in those transactions; saw not in terms of abstract meta-signs or some grand metaphysical void but as zero, painfully concretised in the buying and selling of kinghood, self and love through numbers."

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

this one begins in history of mathematics, focusing on the origins of zero and how it changed european mathematics. but then it compares zero semiotically (as a sign that points to the absence of certain other signs) to the vanishing point in linear perspective drawing and to the imaginary money of capitalist economy and finance, and that is when things really get interesting.

[Leonardo]

Brian Rotman (define) el significado como algo que siempre "se pide prestado al futuro" sosteniéndose en su perpetua posposición de que se complete en su plenitud.

Visión de Paralaje Pág.85

[Plorqk · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't know what I just read.