Zero - Charles Seife [1]
Contents
Chapter 0
Null and Void
Chapter 1
Nothing Doing
The Origin of Zero
Chapter 2
Nothing Comes of Nothing
The West Rejects Zero
Chapter 3
Nothing Ventured
Zero Goes East
Chapter 4
The Infinite God of Nothing
The Theology of Zero
Chapter 5
Infinite Zeros and Infidel Mathematicians
Zero and the Scientific Revolution
Chapter 6
Infinity’s Twin
The Infinite Nature of Zero
Chapter 7
Absolute Zeros
The Physics of Zero
Chapter 8
Zero Hour at Ground Zero
Zero at the Edge of Space and Time
Chapter 9
Zero’s Final Victory
End Time
Appendix A
Animal, Vegetable, or Minister?
Appendix B
The Golden Ratio
Appendix C
The Modern Definition of a Derivative
Appendix D
Cantor Enumerates the Rational Numbers
Appendix E
Make Your Own Wormhole Time Machine
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
zero
Chapter 0
Null and Void
Zero hit the USS Yorktown like a torpedo.
On September 21, 1997, while cruising off the coast of Virginia, the billion-dollar missile cruiser shuddered to a halt. Yorktown was dead in the water.
Warships are designed to withstand the strike of a torpedo or the blast of a mine. Though it was armored against weapons, nobody had thought to defend the Yorktown from zero. It was a grave mistake.
The Yorktown’s computers had just received new software that was controlling the engines. Unfortunately, nobody had spotted the time bomb lurking in the code, a zero that engineers were supposed to remove while installing the software. But for one reason or another, the zero was overlooked, and it stayed hidden in the code. Hidden, that is, until the software called it into memory—and choked.
When the Yorktown’s computer system tried to divide by zero, 80,000 horsepower instantly became worthless. It took nearly three hours to attach emergency controls to the engines, and the Yorktown then limped into port. Engineers spent two days getting rid of the zero, repairing the engines, and putting the Yorktown back into fighting trim.
No other number can do such damage. Computer failures like the one that struck the Yorktown are just a faint shadow of the power of zero. Cultures girded themselves against zero, and philosophies crumbled under its influence, for zero is different from the other numbers. It provides a glimpse of the ineffable and the infinite. This is why it has been feared and hated—and outlawed.
This is the story of zero, from its birth in ancient times to its growth and nourishment in the East, its struggle for acceptance in Europe, its ascendance in the West, and its ever-present threat to modern physics. It is the story of the people who battled over the meaning of the mysterious number—the scholars and mystics, the scientists and clergymen—who each tried to understand zero. It is the story of the Western world’s attempts to shield itself unsuccessfully (and sometimes violently) from an Eastern idea. And it is a history of the paradoxes posed by an innocent-looking number, rattling even this century’s brightest minds and threatening to unravel the whole framework of scientific thought.
Zero is powerful because it is infinity’s twin. They are equal and opposite, yin and yang. They are equally paradoxical and troubling. The biggest questions in science and religion are about nothingness and eternity, the void and the infinite, zero and infinity. The clashes over zero were the battles that shook the foundations of philosophy, of science, of mathematics, and of religion. Underneath every revolution lay a zero—and an infinity.
Zero was at the heart of the battle between East and West. Zero was at the center of the struggle between religion and science. Zero