Zero, Charles Seife
Zero, Charles Seife
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Zero
The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

Author: Charles Seife

Narrator: Bob Souer

Unabridged: 6 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/31/2020

Categories: Nonfiction, Mathematics

Synopsis

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.

About Charles Seife

Charles Seife is the author of several books, including Proofiness and Virtual Unreality. He has written for a wide variety of publications, including the New York Times, Wired, New Scientist, Science, Scientific American, and the Economist. He is a professor of journalism at New York University and lives in New York City.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bharath on September 10, 2021

This book was recommended to me by a friend quite some time back, and I finally got around to reading it now. If you are curious about how zero became mainstream, this is a great book. There are some slow sections especially in the second half though. I listened to the audiobook on Audible and the n......more

Goodreads review by Δx Δp ≥ ½ ħ on March 29, 2011

Ketika Leonardo da Pisa (kelak dikenal juga sebagai Fibonacci) memperkenalkan angka nol ke Eropa, dia banyak dihujat kaum terpelajar di sana. Alasannya, selain angka tersebut berasal dari negeri kaum kafir, Arab (sebenarnya awal mula sejarah angka nol berasal dari peradaban Hindu, tapi diadaptasi, '......more

Goodreads review by Gene on April 13, 2007

A book about numbers that had me laughing out loud while I was on vacation. My wife could not understand how a book about math could make me laugh so much... But any book that shows the horrible mistake that not having a Year 0 (i.e., 1 BC and 1 AD are adjancent) would have on history as well as subt......more

Goodreads review by TK on April 12, 2007

I agree that this was a great book. When I was reading it, I thought what a wonderful experience it would be if the walls between Mathmatics, History, Social Science, and English weren't so high, this type of learning could take place in a middle school setting. If I had read this book when i was in......more

Goodreads review by Prakriti on July 30, 2020

The range of the book, BRILLIANT! It opened with the use of numbers, logics for tallying, and closed with mankind’s attempt to better understand the cosmos. And every chapter, reasonably, screamed the power of zero. It's substantiality in solving some ground-breaking scientific theories to the abili......more

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