*** Welcome to piglix ***

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
Zero - The Biography of a Dangerous Idea.gif
Softcover edition
Author Charles Seife
Country United States
Language English
Subject Zero, nothingness
Genre Non-fiction
Published February 7, 2000
Publisher Viking Adult
Media type Print, e-book
Pages 256 pp.
ISBN
Followed by Alpha & Omega

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.

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


...
Wikipedia

...