Zero The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

Author: Charles Seife

Rating: 0

My Thoughts:

Okay, I put the rating as joke. This is a good book, and certainly merits a rating higher than the score I gave it in all actuality. I would rate it as a solid 8.

I found this book alongside other Math related books at an estate sale. From there a thought occurred that it would be interesting to read a book on all the famous Mathematical values, such as π, e, and of course 0. And despite what you may think, there is a lot to say about 0. It has an interesting history, the concept itself being surprisingly new in its habitation of common conceptuality, despite its current ubiquity.

As the story goes (and I am speaking generally here), the people of antiquity found the concept of nothing to be challenging—and they weren’t wrong either: I can tell you what one of something is, and two is no stretch from there, but what exactly is nothing? I can’t really show you something that is itself nothing can I? And under Aristotlean physics, the concept of nothing was specifically stated to be impossible. This went on to influence Europe and the Church as well. For it’s foray into Mathematics, (to no one’s surprise) it was actually Indian and later Arabic mathematicians who pioneered the concept and actual symbol of zero, where it was slowly adopted in Europe and later became mainstream.

From what I can tell, there was little actual persecution or direct violence aginst anyone who used zero, either conceptually or symbolically. It posed some issues for the Church, for early accountants, and philosophers, but was not actively surpressed on any significant level. But I mean cmon, it’s hard enough to write an interesting enough book on Zero. And we’re reading Pop-Science, not Inventiones Mathematicae. I think a little embellishment is allowed.