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Zero |
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 Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea byCharles Seife Viking Press 248 pages, 2000 ISBN 067088457x Reviewed by John A. Broussard, PhD Let the reader be warned. You will need to remember some of your high school math in order to derive full benefit from this work. A smattering of calculus won’t hurt either when you encounter the dozen or so pages on "Zero and the Mystical Calculus." All in all, however, Seife is skilled in painlessly explaining the significance of zero in the historical past and the scientific present. And the reader is guided through each of the few mathematical formulas the author feels essential in the course of that explanation. Seife is on less certain ground when he presents his central notion that there was historical resistance to the concept of zero. According to him, it was a dangerous idea, threatening some of Christianity’s basic tenets and Western philosophy in general. Born as a placeholder in the Old World (Seife acknowledges the existence of the Mayan concept of zero, but it is of only peripheral concern to his main point), zero simply didn’t fit in with the existing Western system. Zero is a marvelous device to distinguish 12 from 102, but there’s no need for it to tell XII from CII. Amusingly, the author betrays signs of the same failings he finds in the thinking of the Western world. He accepts as fact the stories of Christianity’s past, or slips into "some scholars believe" when dealing with the more dubious aspects of that history. But when it comes to Mohammed’s life, the incidents are "according to legend." However, this is merely minor debris on the trail where Seife explores and explains the significance of zero in our everyday lives. Once incorporated into scientific notation, zero has become so fundamental that we now simply take it for granted. Even such mundane matters as the recent quarrel over when the new millennium begins would have been avoided, had the designers of the Christian calendar been familiar with the concept. And Seife goes on with lucid descriptions of the essential role played by zero in such widely disparate fields of science as quantum mechanics and general relativity. For a history of zero, for an understanding of what zero really means today and how vital it is to our lives, there is no better place to start than with Seife’s work. |
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