8 /10 1 Votes
Country United States Media type Print, e-book ISBN 978-0670884575 Followed by Alpha & Omega | 4/5 Goodreads Language English Pages 256 pp. Originally published 7 February 2000 Publisher Viking Press Subjects 0, Nothing | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Genres Mathematics, Philosophy, Science, Biography Similar Charles Seife books, Mathematics books, Number theory books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea is a book by American author and journalist Charles Seife. The book offers a comprehensive look at number 0 and its controversing role as one of the great paradoxes of human thought and history since its invention by the ancient Babylonians. Even though zero is a fundamental idea for the modern science, initially the notion of a complete absence got a largely negative, sometimes hostile, treatment by the Western world and Greco-Roman philosophy. Zero won 2001 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction Book.
Review
Of course, Seife's book is not a typical biography. There are no tell-all interviews with the number one or any of zero's other neighbors on the number line... Seife's book begins--of course--at Chapter Zero, with a story of how only recently a divide by zero error in its control software brought the guided missile cruiser USS Yorktown grinding to a halt. As Seife relates, "Though it was armored against weapons, nobody had thought to defend the Yorktown from zero. It was a grave mistake." Maybe it's not the pulse-pounding drama of a Tom Clancy novel, but it's enough foreshadowing to launch Seife on an essay which begins with notches on a 30,000-year-old wolf bone and ends with the role of zero in black holes and the big bang.
—Mathematical Association of America