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. 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. For zero, infinity's twin, is not like other numbers. For centuries the power of zero savored of the demonic once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics.
Now it threatens the foundations of modern physics.
"Zero is really something"-Washington PostA New York Times Notable Book.The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshiped it, and the Church used it to fend off heretics. Popular math at its most entertaining and enlightening.
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