Financial literacy could add so much to the way we live

More than 800 years ago, the young son of an Italian diplomat published a book that changed the course of Western civilisation.

- VIKTOR PROKOPENYA

Leonardo of Pisa was raised in Bugia, Algeria, by his father, a Pisan customs official and merchant. During his scholarship in the North African coastal town, roughly opposite Sardinia, Leonardo was taught by Arab scholars who introduced him to a new concept that had largely failed to penetrate Europe: algebra.

The concept was founded on the revolutionary importance of zero. At its mathematical essence, zero enables us to transition from positive numbers to negative numbers, allowing creditors (those who have money) and debtors (those who owe money) to be easily defined. Zero also allows us to represent large numbers, such as 1,000,000, unlocking our ability to subtract, add, divide and multiply them - a revelation with seismic implications for trade and commerce.

The concept of zero had been dismissed by early European civilisations. Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato and Pythagoras were not keen on the void. But over in India, a primary objective for ancient Hindus was to attain a form of nothingness, which seems to have led to advances in their understanding of mathematics. When Arabs conquered the Persian empire in the 7th century, they learned ancient Hindu numerals that opened their eyes to a wondrous technology of ones, tens and hundreds.