Zero

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Charles Seife is a journalist and author who teaches at New York University. He studied mathematics at Princeton and Yale, and his other books include Proofiness, Alpha & Omega, and Decoding the Universe.

Zero, a concept initially dismissed by the ancient Greeks as mere imagination, profoundly influenced the evolution of mathematics and philosophy. While Aristotle's rejection of zero and infinity shaped Western thought for centuries, other cultures, like the Babylonians, Indians, and later Arabic scholars, embraced zero as a transformative mathematical tool. The Babylonians introduced zero as a placeholder in their sexagesimal system, while Indian mathematicians explored its abstract properties, linking it to infinity and unlocking groundbreaking possibilities. These ideas eventually reached the West, where figures like Descartes and Newton grappled with zero’s implications, leading to revolutionary advancements like calculus. Meanwhile, zero’s enigmatic nature extended beyond mathematics, influencing physics through concepts like absolute zero and black holes. Despite its controversial history, zero emerged as a cornerstone of human understanding, bridging the abstract and the practical across cultures and disciplines.

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