The Seba library treats Zero in 8 passages, across 4 authors (including McGilchrist, Iain, Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, James, William).
In the library
8 passages
God as negatio negationis is simultaneously total emptiness and supreme fullness … the tao is 'the deep source of everything. It is nothing, and yet in everything'
McGilchrist argues, drawing on Eckhart, Boehme, Kabbalah, and the Tao Te Ching, that zero/nothingness is not privation but the paradoxical ontological ground that is simultaneously empty and absolutely full.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
God as negatio negationis is simultaneously total emptiness and supreme fullness … the tao is 'the deep source of everything. It is nothing, and yet in everything'
Duplicate witness to McGilchrist's core claim that the negation of negation — zero as double negation — yields supreme ontological plenitude rather than mere absence.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
'They are nothings', he wrote … 'das Nichts selbst nichtet' … Nothing, like Being, is no thing. Neither is it the mere absence of a thing: it is a subject of action
McGilchrist invokes Heidegger's 'nothing noths' to establish that zero/nothing is not passive absence but an active ontological force, aligning mathematical emptiness with existential generativity.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
'They are nothings', he wrote … 'das Nichts selbst nichtet' … Neither is it the mere absence of a thing: it is a subject of action, Heidegger implies
Parallel edition witness confirming McGilchrist's reading of Heidegger: nothingness actively 'noths,' making zero a productive rather than merely null quantity.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
an old edition of the spiritual cow-herding pictures, which end with an empty circle corresponding to the eighth of the present series
Suzuki identifies the empty circle (enso) at the culmination of the ox-herding sequence as the visual symbol of zero-as-completion — the void that marks full awakening.
Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), 1949supporting
'As long as one is conscious of having nothing, there still remains the guardian of poverty … For from the very beginning I do not see even the one that is poor.'
Suzuki presents a Zen teacher's verse in which true emptiness — absolute zero — transcends even the consciousness of having nothing, pointing to a nothingness that annihilates the witness of nothingness itself.
Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), 1949supporting
The discrepancy between A and V,,, the surprisingness of the UCS, is equal to zero, so AV, = 0 by Equation 5-2.
James employs zero in its strict mathematical sense as the point of null discrepancy in conditioning equations, where no further learning occurs — zero as the asymptote of habituation.
James, William, The Principles of Psychology, 1890supporting
it must necessarily be said that the being and perfection of every created thing is essentially good. Hence it cannot be that evil signifies a being … by the name of evil is signified the absence of good.
Jung quotes Aquinas on the privatio boni doctrine, where evil is defined as a zero-quantity — pure absence of good — a formulation Jung elsewhere contests as psychologically inadequate.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951aside