Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea [Paperback]

This is one of the best-written popular science books to have come this way for quite a while... Seife has a neat turn of phrase, an easy yet respectful familiarity with his subject that helps the maths slip down easily. --Nicholas Lezard, 'The Guardian'

A witty but lucid account... A must for armchair logicians. --'BBC Focus'

A breathless tour of the dangerous idea of zero. --'New Scientist'

a witty but lucid account... A must for armchair logicians.

Within the concept of zero lies a philosophical and scientific history of Mankind. The Babylonians invented zero, it was banned by the Greeks while on the eve of the Millennium zero was feared to be a timebomb within the world s computer systems. There was a time when zero did not exist, the concept of zero is a relatively recent Eastern concept and for centuries there was a struggle over its very existence. For many cultures zero represented the void and it could prove to undo the framework of logic. It was seen as an alien concept that could shatter the framework of Christianity and science yet European acceptance of zero as a philosophical concept was at the centre of the RenaissanceOver three thousand years the concept of zero has been at the heart of the intellectual debates that have created our culture. In the first millennium zero lay at the heart of the debate between Eastern and Western religion, while after the Renaissance zero was at the centre of the struggle between religion and science. Zero s power comes from its ability to disrupt the laws of physics and it may hold the secret of the cosmos. From the nothingness of a vacuum came our universe, if our universe was born in zero so zero could hold the existence of an infinite number of other universes. .

Charles Seife has worked with such mathematicians as Andrew Wiles, the solver of Fermat s Last Theorem, and John Conway, inventor of the game of life . He is the American correspondent for New Scientist.