Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife, Viking,
$24.95, ISBN 067088457X
The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero by Robert Kaplan, Oxford
University Press, $22, ISBN 0195128427
WHEN zero was introduced to Britain, it was the subject of a postgraduate
course at the University of Oxford. Now, the notion of a notation for nothing is
so entrenched in the culture that everyone—except for a few tiresome
pedants—assumes that a new century must start with an “00”.
But, curiously, when you begin to examine how nothing went from specialist
topic to commonplace knowledge in…
