Zero : The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

by Seife, Charles (Author)

• ISBN13: 9780140296471
• ISBN10: 0140296476
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-09-01
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Null and Void	1	(216)
Nothing Doing
The Origin of Zero	5	(20)
Nothing Comes of Nothing
The West Rejects Zero	25	(38)
Nothing Ventured
Zero Goes East	63	(20)
The Infinite God of Nothing
The Theology of Zero	83	(22)
Infinite Zeros and Infidel Mathematicians
Zero and the Scientific Revolution	105	(26)
Infinity's Twin
The Infinite Nature of Zero	131	(26)
Absolute Zeros
The Physics of Zero	157	(34)
Zero Hour at Ground Zero
Zero at the Edge of Space and Time	191	(20)
Zero's Final Victory
End Time	211	(6)
Appendix A Animal, Vegetable, or Minister?	217	(4)
Appendix B The Golden Ratio	221	(2)
Appendix C The Modern Definition of a Derivative	223	(2)
Appendix D Cantor Enumerates the Rational Numbers	225	(4)
Appendix E Make Your Own Wormhole Time Machine	229	(2)
Selected Bibliography	231	(8)
Acknowledgments	239	(2)
Index	241