Negation has ascended into the imagination of our culture and society not necessarily as something to be scorned or regretted, but as something with which to be, in some cultural, philosophical, or even religious form, reconciled, says Dr Andrew Hass. But before we can understand how this figure might work its way into and through our present world, we need first to ask, whence 'zero'? For its history is by no means one we might expect.