AUTHOR: Charles Seife
STARTED: January 10, 2012
FINISHED: February 17, 2012
PAGES: 248
GENRE: Non-Fiction
FIRST SENTENCE: Zero hit the USS Yorktown like a torpedo.
SUMMARY: A concise and appealing look at the strangest number in the universe and its continuing role as one of the great paradoxes of human thought
The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshiped it, and the Church used it to fend off heretics. Now, as Y2K fever rages, it threatens a technological apocalypse. 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.
THOUGHTS: I have a new found love of all things science, thanks to The Boyfriend. I picked up this book when we visited the Bibliobarn in October. Something about a number being heretical struck my interest. Zero is an incredibly interesting book, well-written, and only made me go "Huh?" a few times toward the end. Seife set out to chronicle the life of zero (0) and he does so in a remarkably entertaining fashion.
I had no expectations for this book, so I was pleasantly surprised when the majority was quite readable (and funny!). Seife starts his story from the beginning, when zero was a concept to be blatantly ignored (shun the non-entity!) to today when zero is an integral part of physics, math, and everything else. The book is very easy to understand and follow in the early and middle chapters. We, like those ancients and medievals, are learning about the power of zero. It's only the last few chapters that become convoluted. Zero is firmly implanted in our lives these days, so it takes some serious science to implement our beloved number. Thus, difficult concepts - which are hard to digest in the few minutes before one falls asleep - fill the bulk of the final pages.
The book is well structured; simple, straight-forward from then to now timeline. This allows Seife concepts and stories to build (and the few digressions from the timeline are a welcome sidebar). The writing is simple for a concept that becomes rather entangled as it progresses. There are math-y and science-y terms, but Seife takes the time to explain the most complicated issues. It's easy to keep up, and occasionally you may find yourself going, "Yes! I did that in my algebra class!
Yes, this book has footnotes, but it's not a stodgy academic work. This is an eminently readable text for anyone who is interested in the subject.
RATING: 7/10 [Very Good]
Comments