I just finished reading a book about nothing. Actually it’s about everything, which is of course the flip side of nothing. More specifically, I’ve been reading Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife. The book is an interesting and insightful exploration of the history of this troubling and important number that we so easily take for granted.
Seife traces zero’s roots from a placeholder in the Babylonian number system all the way up to the problems it causes in modern physics whether deep in the gravity wells of black holes or in the subatomic orbits of electrons.
My favorite thing about reading this was the historical aspects of the tale. Zero was considered heresy in early Christian Europe because it represented the void and brought up issues surrounding the infinite, both of which clashed with the Aristotelian theology at the heart of the early church. Without zero, though, European math would be trapped forever within the perimeters of geometry.
Seife relates the stories of sometimes clandestine efforts of mathematicians who worked with the Eastern algebra and its conception of zero, combining it with geometry and developing trigonometry and finally calculus. Along the way they discovered irrational numbers, negative numbers, and my favorite from high school – imaginary numbers, a concept that still blows my mind just as it did back then.
When I took Calculus back in high school, I didn’t understand why it existed or what you could do with it. It was just problems I couldn’t figure out how to work. Without getting too mathematical, Seife articulately explains what calculus is for and why it’s needed. In essence it’s the language of change and motion, the language of physics, without which science as we know it could not have developed. And calculus couldn’t have developed without an understanding of the mathematical properties of zero and infinity. Perhaps it would have been more interesting back then if I had understood its purpose.
Seife finally moves from a history of math to an overview of the great mysteries surrounding modern physics such as the big bang and black holes (zeros in relativity), electrons (zeros in quantum mechanics) and finally a quick take on the efforts of string theorists to remove those zeros that cause breakdowns in the laws of physics. String theory is briefly explained as a primarily mathematical attempt to unify relativity with quantum mechanics in a quantum theory of gravity or better yet, a theory of everything. He wraps the book up with thoughts about the beginning and end of the universe, literally going from nothing to everything.
In the Talking Heads song “Heaven” David Byrne sings, “It’s hard to imagine that nothing at all could be so exciting, could be so much fun.” It’s a beautiful song and one that may or may not capture the essence of Heaven, but certainly describes the experience of reading Zero, a book about nothing at all, and yet so much fun.
James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.
You bring back memories of all those classes I took to get that Physics degree. There was such a joy when there was an enormous quantum equation, and some piece of it could be approximated to zero. One less piece of the equation to deal with. As long as Seife avoids complex numbers (ones with a real and an imaginary component), maybe I’ll pick up his book.
Well, I have ‘nothing’ to say about that
Heather, he doesn’t mention complex numbers so I think it’s safe.
Ironicus, I thought that was the case with me, but I’m glad I at least avoided an infinite number of words on the subject.