Zero
The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
The number Europe refused to accept for centuries, because admitting it meant admitting the void.
Seife’s biography of a number that Western thought resisted for centuries. Zero and its twin, infinity, threatened a cosmology built on Aristotle’s horror of the void, so Europe kept them out long after India had accepted both. Seife follows the idea into calculus, thermodynamics, black holes and the arithmetic of dividing by nothing, where it still breaks things. Short, argumentative, and good on why a mathematical idea can be genuinely dangerous.
Recommended by 1 Person
Alex Bellos
But Seife says the other reason, spiritually or religiously, that we were afraid of infinity and zero and the reason that India got zero, was that Western religions thought there has to be God everywhere.
Interview · November 2012
As an Amazon Associate, bookstoread.org earns from qualifying purchases. Links to Amazon on this page may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. Spotted an error on this page? Tell us and we will fix it.