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Zero
The Biography of a Dangerous Idea |
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Title Details
Running Time
5 Hrs. 45 Min.
Description
The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshipped it, and the Church used it to ward off heretics. Zero - infinity's twin - is not like other numbers. It is both nothing and everything. For centuries the power of zero smacked of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. 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.
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