Zero

A concise and appealing look at the strangest number in the universe and its continuing role as one of the great paradoxes of human thought.

The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshiped it, and the Church used it to fend off heretics. Now it threatens the foundations of modern physics. For centuries the power of zero savored of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. For zero, infinity's twin, is not like other numbers. It is both nothing and everything.

In Zero, Science Journalist Charles Seife follows this innocent-looking number from its birth as an Eastern philosophical concept to its struggle for acceptance in Europe, its rise and transcendence in the West, and its ever-present threat to modern physics. Here are the legendary thinkers -- from Pythagoras to Newton to Heisenberg, from the Kabalists to today's astrophysicists -- who have tried to understand it and whose clashes shook the foundations of philosophy, science, mathematics, and religion. Zero has pitted East against West and faith against reason, and its intransigence persists in the dark core of a black hole and the brilliant flash of the Big Bang. Today, zero lies at the heart of one of the biggest scientific controversies of all time: the quest for a theory of everything.

Readers of Fermat's Enigma and The Man Who Loved Only Numbers -- and Viking's Seeing and Believing and Penguin's Longitude -- will find the revealingly illustrated Zero freshly informative, easy to understand, and -- infinitely -- fascinating.
 
 
 

Praise for Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

"Mr. Seife is the United States correspondent for New Scientist and recounts his story as an accomplished science journalist, standing on the outside bringing clarity to complex ideas.... Mr. Seife also gracefully surveys the weirdness of modern physics, where vacuums exert pressure and notions of 'zero-point energy' inspire fantasies of space travel."

"'The universe begins and ends with zero.' So does Seife's book, but his readers, after finishing, will feel they've experienced a considerable something."

"Seife tells stories of mathematicians involved in the denial or promotion of zero that are as incredible as the plot of Pi.... If the popularizers of mathematics continue to churn out such bizarre stories, math has a secure place in mass culture, able to compete with the wildest fare served up by Jerry Springer and the tabloids."

"In a lively and literate first book, science journalist Seife takes readers on a historical, mathematical and scientific journey from the infinitesimal to the infinite ... Seife keeps the tone as light as his  subject matter is deep. By book's end, no reader will dispute Seife's claim that zero is among the  most fertile ideas that humanity has devised."

"A cipher signifying only defeat and failure for the scorekeeper or the accountant, zero emerges as a daunting intellectual riddle in this fascinating chronicle.... Deftly and surely, Seife recounts the historical debates, then swiftly rolls the zero right up to the present day, where he plunges through its perilous opening down into the voracious maw of a black hole, and then out into the deep freeze of an ever cooling cosmos. A must read for every armchair physicist."

"Even the mathphobic will enjoy this book. More than just the story of a number, zero is a book about nothing -- and the reluctance of otherwise bright thinkers to accept nothing."

"[Zero]... shifts smoothly from history and philosophy to science and technology, and his prose displays a gift for making complex ideas clear."

"... you'll discover that Seife has a talent for making the most ball-busting of modern theories (string theory again; basic quantum mechanics) seem fairly lucid and common-sensical."

"Seife is an excellent teacher, covering a wide diversity of subjects. The fascinating historical survey - from ancient cave peoples to the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, the Muslim empire, through Europe of the Middle Ages and Renaissance up to the 19th century - is sprinkled with interesting characters, including Pythagoras, Zeno, Archimedes, Copernicus, Kepler, Descartes, Galileo, Pascal and Newton.... In addition, with a little extra effort the attentive reader can learn some of the basic mathematical ideas behind infinite series, limits, calculus, complex numbers, projective geometry, and Georg Cantor's remarkable theory of how some infinities can be shown to be larger than others!"

"A stunning chronicle of the denial, heresy, and grudging acceptance of zero and its companion concepts, infinity and the void. For those who think all mathematical proofs are boring, Appendix A nicely proves that Winston Churchill was a carrot."