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"Silence is one of the great arts of conversation, as allowed by Cicero himself, who says, 'there is not only an art, but an eloquence in it.' A well bred woman may easily and effectually promote the most useful and elegant conversation without speaking a word. The modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence."
- Tom Blair
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ZIN Product Number: 10026304
| eBay (last 12 months) | | Auctions: | | 62 | | Price Range: | | $0.04 - 0.06 | | | | Craigslist (last 12 months) | | Classifieds: | | 22 | | Price Range: | | $0.06 - 0.07 | | | | Amazon Used (last 12 months) | | Auctions: | | 62 | | Price Range: | | $0.06 - 0.04 | | | | ZooScape (last 12 months) | | Auctions: | | 0 | | Price Range: | | N/A | | | | | | Google listings (non-affiliate) | | 90 | | MSN listings (non-affiliate) | | 38 | | Yahoo listings (non-affiliate) | | 42 | | |
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| | | |  | | | Product Details
 Format: Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Penguin USA
ISBN: 0140296476
Release Date: Jan 9, 2000
Average Reader Review:    (Based on 5 reviews.)
| |  | | | From The Publisher
A concise and appealing look at the strangest number in the universe and its continuing role as one of the great paradoxes of human thought
The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshiped it, and the Church used it to fend off heretics. Now, as Y2K fever rages, it threatens a technological apocalypse. For centuries the power of zero savored of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. For zero, infinity's twin, is not like other numbers. It is both nothing and everything.
In Zero science journalist Charles Seife follows this innocent-looking number from its birth as an Eastern philosophical concept to its struggle for acceptance in Europe, its rise and transcendence in the West, and its ever-present threat to modern physics. Here are the legendary thinkers--from Pythagoras to Newton to Heisenberg, from the Kabalists to today's astrophysicists--who have tried to understand it and whose clashes shook the foundations of philosophy, science, mathematics, and religion. Zero has pitted East against West and faith against reason, and its intransigence persists in the dark core of a black hole and the brilliant flash of the Big Bang. Today, zero lies at the heart of one of the biggest scientific controversies of all time, the quest for a theory of everything.
Readers of Fermat's Enigma, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, Seeing and Believing, and Longitudewill find the revealingly illustrated Zero freshly informative, easy to understand, and--infinitely--fascinating.
Charles Seife, a U.S. correspondent for the international magazine New Scientist, has also written for Scientific American, The Economist, Science, Wired UK, The Sciences, and numerous other publications. He holds an M.S. in mathematics from Yale University and his areas of research include probability theory and artificial intelligence.
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 | | | | | Number of Reviews: 5 Average Rating:
Worth a skimming, if even that
-- A reviewer, February 13, 2002
Atrocious
-- Bob, a bookstore aficionado, December 28, 2001
Also Recommended: Robert Kaplan, The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero Kip Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy
A gem
-- Jeff Tyzzer, December 10, 2001
Also Recommended: The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Human Mind by Amir D. Aczel
Wonderful Book
-- Mike Pemberton, a math major at Marshall University, April 29, 2002
Also Recommended: The History of Pi, and e: The History of a Number
Uneven and unfocused
-- Pete J, a software writer and programmer, February 4, 2002
Also Recommended: Fermat's Enigma: The Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem, by Simon Singh (highly recommended)
| |  | | | The Word On The Street
From John Rennie, Editor in chief of Scientific American Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea describes with good humor and wonder how one digit has bedeviled and fascinated thinkers from ancient Athens to Los Alamos. Charles Seife deftly argues that the concept of nothingness and its show-off twin, infinity, have repeatedly revolutionized the foundations of civilization and philosophical thought. If you're already a fan of mathematics or science, you will enjoy this book; if you're not, you will be by the time you finish it. —John Rennie
From Author of The End of Science Charles Seife has made a marvelously entertaining something out of nothing. By simply telling the tale of zero, Seife provides a fresh and fascinating history not only of mathematics but also of science, philosophy, theology, and even art. An impressive debut for a promising young science writer. —John Horgan
The universe begins and ends with zero.' So does Seife's book, but his readers, after finishing, will feel they've experienced a considerable something —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
| |  | | | | Ch. 0 | Null and Void | 1 | | Ch. 1 | Nothing Doing: The Origin of Zero | 5 | | Ch. 2 | Nothing Comes of Nothing: The West Rejects Zero | 25 | | Ch. 3 | Nothing Ventured: Zero Goes East | 63 | | Ch. 4 | The Infinite God of Nothing: The Theology of Zero | 83 | | Ch. 5 | Infinite Zeros and Infidel Mathematicians: Zero and the Scientific Revolution | 105 | | Ch. 6 | Infinity's Twin: The Infinite Nature of Zero | 131 | | Ch. 7 | Absolute Zeros: The Physics of Zero | 157 | | Ch. 8 | Zero Hour at Ground Zero: Zero at the Edge of Space and Time | 191 | | Ch. [infinity] | Zero's Final Victory: End Time | 211 | | App. A | Animal, Vegetable, or Minister? | 217 | | App. B | The Golden Ratio | 221 | | App. C | The Modern Definition of a Derivative | 223 | | App. D | Cantor Enumerates the Rational Numbers | 225 | | App. E | Make Your Own Wormhole Time Machine | 229 | | Selected Bibliography | 231 | | Acknowledgments | 239 | | Index | 241 |
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| | | | | | Keywords
Biography/Autobiography, Mathematics, History & Philosophy, Philosophy & Social Aspects, Arithmetic, Literary, Biography & Autobiography, Zero (The number)
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