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The body, the house of the spirit, is under the power of pleasure and pain,” explains a god. “And if a man is ruled by his body then this man can never be free.
Zero
It was devised by the Babylonians, forbidden by the Greeks, worshipped by Hindus, and employed by the Church to combat heretics. It now poses a danger to contemporary physics' underpinnings. The power of zero was thought to be demonic for ages, but once tamed, it became the most significant instrument in mathematics. Infinity's twin, zero, is unlike any other number. It is both nothing and everything at the same time.
In Zero, science journalist Charles Seife explores this seemingly innocuous number from its origins as an Eastern philosophical notion through its fight for acceptance in Europe, as well as its ascent and transcendence in the West and its ever-present danger to contemporary physics. Here are the great philosophers who have attempted to explain it, from Pythagoras to Newton to Heisenberg, from the Kabalists to today's astrophysicists, whose confrontations rocked the foundations of philosophy, science, mathematics, and religion. In the dark heart of a black hole and the dazzling flare of the Big Bang, Zero has put East against West and faith against reason, yet its stubbornness continues. Today, Zero is at the center of one of the most contentious scientific debates of all time: the search for an all-encompassing theory.
The body, the house of the spirit, is under the power of pleasure and pain,” explains a god. “And if a man is ruled by his body then this man can never be free.
