If "999" is filled with finality, then "000" holds mystery and uncertainty. But an examination of the "0" as a number as it has evolved through history suggests some reasons for optimism. PNS editor Franz Schurmann, a professor emeritus of history and sociology at UC-Berkeley, is author of "American Soul" (Mercury House, 1995).

When "999" appears on the car's odometer, people watch expectantly for the 000. They know that the 9's mean an ending, but the meaning of the 0's is not so clear.

Now we're in the year 1999, and there is a sense that it marks the end of a century marked by great progress -- and great destruction. As for the coming year 2000, predictions abound, ranging from even more progress to even more destruction.

But the 0 itself could possibly be a sign of things to come.

The year 2000 is part of a chronology called "the Common Era," which is known and used by just about everyone in the world. Anyone who has watched TV or flown in a plane has, knowingly or unknowingly, used the Common Era chronology.

All the technology of transportation and communication would be impossible without modern mathematics. But without the "0" there would be no modern mathematics. So without modern mathematics there would be no one world.

The concept of 0 is both highly useful and seriously disturbing. Almost two millennia ago, the Hindus in India and the Maya in Central America discovered they needed the zero for their chronological calculations. The Muslim Arabs used it for their own chronology. But European Christians long resisted because they saw something demonic in the zero.

The 0 has, in fact, three distinct meanings. The first is highly rational. In mathematics, the 0 is the first integral number in an interconnected series of integral numbers (0... 1... 10... 100...1000). But the 0 can have an irrational meaning as a "singularity" -- a point in a curve where all mathematics breaks down. In short, the 0 can denote chaos. Thirdly, the 0 can have a meaning that is neither rational nor irrational -- it can denote nothing and, as such, be disconnected from everything, even itself.

Until the 1600s, European Christendom avoided using the 0 by using the Roman chronology but assigning the year 1 to the birth of Christ and attributing no dates to events that preceded it. (In the original chronology created by Julius Caesar, year 1 designated the founding of the City of Rome, which took place in 753 BC).

Caesar introduced his new chronology because he envisioned a world-encompassing empire. The Roman Church still calls itself Catholic, a Greek word meaning universal.

As the Enlightenment unfolded, European thinkers had visions of a new universalism -- for example, time is a key concept in the work of Isaac Newton. Historians, deeply influenced by his time concept, began to construct "time-lines" that follow the trajectory of events from some point in the past to the present. They eventually discovered that Christ was born in the year 4 B.C.E., that is, Christ was born 4 years B[efore] C[hrist].

By the 18th century Christian opposition could no longer halt the juggernaut of modern mathematics-based science. Propelled by a massive wave of scientific rationalism, the French Revolution propounded a new universal chronology, with its year 1 equivalent to 1793 C.E. Napoleon, when he was crowned Emperor of the world, returned to the Roman Christian chronology's beginning year.

There is a lot of chaos and uncertainty in the world and there isn't much doubt it will continue. Yet that iron-clad predictability of mathematics has made possible air travel and Internet communication that operate with mind-boggling precision.

The three divergent meanings of the 0 do generate predictions. The 0's rational meaning suggests that the time-lines that have marked this century will go on. That's a positive take because chaotic events only appear once on a time line graph. They form no lines. Time-lines therefore are rational and therefore make sense.

In practical terms that means a lot that has come out of mathematics' iron-clad predictability will continue with more to come. And that will mean a more rather than less ordered world. More peace and more prosperity during the next century and millennium are a good predictive bet.

On the other hand the 0 tells us that chaotic events will always lurk beneath the horizon. Can they be predicted? According to the singularity concept they can't. They simply happen like the "big bang" singularity out of which our universe began.

The 0 also tells us that it can be nothing at all. The Buddhist faith considers "emptiness" to be the underlying reality of everyday life. But emptiness is a far cry from chaos. It can be the key to practicality, like managing one's everyday life by taking things one at a time, making few or no assumptions.

What the latter sign suggests is that if everybody all over the world can manage their lives in a practically useful way then it could be a better world. For all the horrors technology has produced there are many more good things it has done. Otherwise, we would not have that rising longevity which the econometrician, moral philosopher and Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen has made his key indicator of well-being for all humans.

So it appears the first rational and third nothing meanings of the 0 outweigh the second chaos meaning. 2 against 1, the former win, the latter loses.