Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea.
Really, the only reasons I have for picking up this book are the following: 1) I was bored, 2) I was too lazy to go to the bookstore to buy books and 3) I had already read all the other books that my friend Stephanie has, except for this one. So, Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea it was.
It is a rather interesting idea - as the back of the book reads, "For centuries, the power of zero savored of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. Zero follows this number from its birth as an Eastern philsophical concept to its struggle for acceptance in Europe and its apotheosis as the mystery of the black hole." And it has very good reviews, although I know that all book review quotes found on books should be taken with a grain of salt.
And while it is indeed a fascinating topic, this is definitely not the book to read for that half-hour before you go to sleep. Usually by then, my mind is too groggy to really pay attention, and I can't follow anything more complex than a trashy novel.
The author, Charles Seife, is a journalist with Science magazine. He starts at the very beginning: life before zero. If you didn't think that life existed without zero - well, apparently the Egyptians didn't use the concept of zero. Nor did the Greeks. It was actually the Babylonians who used zero, but only as a placeholder. It didn't have meaning at that point. The Mayans used it too (and had funky glyphs for each digit, which I can only imagine made writing out numbers hard.) In India and the Arab lands, however, zero was a concept embraced, and it was the Indians who actually made use of zero as more than just a placeholder, giving it the power of any other number. Zero was finally reintroduced to Europe in the 1400s, although by no means was it accepted, especially by the church.
The book goes on to describe how important a concept and number zero is, and how without it, we would have such things as calculus (which wouldn't be too bad, I think, I hated calculus) nor the concept of infinity, nor physics (again, would be it be bad if we didn't have physics?).
It's all very fascinating, but unfortunately in parts the author gets too technical and mathematical, which makes for inherently dry reading matter. If you can sludge through those parts, the book on the whole is relatively rewarding reading, as it's short but interesting, and if you can remember concepts from it, you can sound really smart at cocktail parties.
It is a rather interesting idea - as the back of the book reads, "For centuries, the power of zero savored of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. Zero follows this number from its birth as an Eastern philsophical concept to its struggle for acceptance in Europe and its apotheosis as the mystery of the black hole." And it has very good reviews, although I know that all book review quotes found on books should be taken with a grain of salt.
And while it is indeed a fascinating topic, this is definitely not the book to read for that half-hour before you go to sleep. Usually by then, my mind is too groggy to really pay attention, and I can't follow anything more complex than a trashy novel.
The author, Charles Seife, is a journalist with Science magazine. He starts at the very beginning: life before zero. If you didn't think that life existed without zero - well, apparently the Egyptians didn't use the concept of zero. Nor did the Greeks. It was actually the Babylonians who used zero, but only as a placeholder. It didn't have meaning at that point. The Mayans used it too (and had funky glyphs for each digit, which I can only imagine made writing out numbers hard.) In India and the Arab lands, however, zero was a concept embraced, and it was the Indians who actually made use of zero as more than just a placeholder, giving it the power of any other number. Zero was finally reintroduced to Europe in the 1400s, although by no means was it accepted, especially by the church.
The book goes on to describe how important a concept and number zero is, and how without it, we would have such things as calculus (which wouldn't be too bad, I think, I hated calculus) nor the concept of infinity, nor physics (again, would be it be bad if we didn't have physics?).
It's all very fascinating, but unfortunately in parts the author gets too technical and mathematical, which makes for inherently dry reading matter. If you can sludge through those parts, the book on the whole is relatively rewarding reading, as it's short but interesting, and if you can remember concepts from it, you can sound really smart at cocktail parties.
posted at 11:59
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