Zero enters through the servants' door

Status: Anticipated · untested

Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).

This is a proposed connection between two domains, generated by a language model. It is not an article and not evidence: it sits below the evidence/publication boundary. A quantitative prediction and a named kill-dataset are attached (when registered) so the claim stays falsifiable rather than merely evocative.

Claim (verbatim)

The standard picture has Hindu-Arabic numerals entering Latin Europe through algorism treatises — books that explain the new arithmetic. The surprising connection is that the zero sign appears earlier and more consistently in Latin astronomical TABLES than in Latin arithmetical texts: the vector was the data artifact, which cannot function without a place-holder, not the treatise that teaches one. The mechanism is that a table forces its notation on the copyist whether or not he understands it, while a treatise must wait for a reader who wants to learn. If this holds, the diffusion map of the new numerals should be redrawn along table-copying routes rather than arithmetic-teaching routes, and the algorism looks like documentation trailing an already-installed technology.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

Among dated twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin witnesses, the earliest attested zero sign in astronomical-table manuscripts (DISHAS witnesses) will precede the earliest zero in algorism-treatise manuscripts (dated via eTK incipits) in at least four of five major regions (Iberia, France, England, Italy, Empire), with a median regional lead of at least 20 years. Primary clause: the four-of-five regional precedence; the 20-year median is secondary.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

DISHAS witness datings and images for table numerals, with eTK dated algorism incipits in addition.

Nobody has run this test. The kill-data is named above. If you can run it — or you know the paper that already settles it — claim the kill or submit the prior. Kills and priors are credited here, by name, as they come in.

In the atlas

This conjecture is bridged, as an L1 lead, onto these Inferpedia subject pages.

Provenance

Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5

Composed blind by claude-fable-5 with zero tool use of any kind; the packet was generated entirely from the model's own knowledge and emitted as a single text message.

Novelty / leakage triage

anticipated in the literature — this exact test has never been run

Burnett's corpus of studies traces Hindu-Arabic numeral adoption through astronomical and arithmetical manuscripts and stresses the role of astronomical texts and tables in carrying numeral forms, so the vector is anticipated; but the specific regional table-before-algorism precedence test for the zero sign (4-of-5 regions, dated witnesses) has not been assembled.

C. Burnett, Numerals and Arithmetic in the Middle Ages (Variorum, 2010)
C. Burnett, 'Indian Numerals in the Mediterranean Basin in the Twelfth Century, with Special Reference to the Eastern Forms'

Predictions

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