{"id":128,"date":"2006-04-15T10:50:33","date_gmt":"2006-04-15T10:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alephnaught.wordpress.com\/2006\/04\/15\/zero-the-biography-of-a-dangerous-idea\/"},"modified":"2008-11-02T06:49:40","modified_gmt":"2008-11-02T14:49:40","slug":"zero-the-biography-of-a-dangerous-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/2006\/04\/15\/zero-the-biography-of-a-dangerous-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content_div-128\">\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Title: <\/strong><span style=\"font-family: Helvetica;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0140296476\/sr=8-1\/qid=1145123216\/ref=pd_bbs_1\/102-7723067-9372916?%5Fencoding=UTF8\" target=\"NewWindow\">Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>Author: <\/strong>Charles Seife<\/li>\n<li><strong>Paperback: <\/strong>256 pages<\/li>\n<li><strong>Publisher: <\/strong>Penguin (Non-Classics) (September 1, 2000)<\/li>\n<li><strong>ISBN: <\/strong>0140296476<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This was a really fun read &#8211; it reminded me of discussions I had in college about zero and infinity (and part of the whole thing about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/AlephNaught.html\">Aleph Naught and the Null Set<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>The nice twist of this book is to include the external factors influencing the acceptance and rejection of zero, mostly having to do with religions not wanting to deal with things coming to be from the void.<\/p>\n<p>If you want an accessible, reasonable read to learn about the development of zero (and why its important in mathematics), this is a good place to start.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"translate_block\" style=\"display: none;\">\n<hr class=\"translate_hr\" \/>\n<a class=\"translate_translate\" id=\"translate_button_post-128\" lang=\"en\" xml:lang=\"en\" href=\"javascript:show_translate_popup('en', 'post', 128);\"><span>Translate<\/span><\/a><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/google-ajax-translation\/transparent.gif?resize=16%2C16&#038;ssl=1\" id=\"translate_loading_post-128\" class=\"translate_loading colorbox-128\" style=\"display: none;\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"\" \/>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Title: Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea Author: Charles Seife Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (September 1, 2000) ISBN: 0140296476 This was a really fun read &#8211; it reminded me of discussions I had in college about zero and infinity (and part of the whole thing about Aleph Naught and the Null Set). [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[2344,91],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-books","tag-mathematics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2w3Qj-24","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}