That’s another thing I enjoy so much about this book – I fear I’m generalizing, but most mainstream scientific narratives tend to put Greece at the center of everything, as if everything important was discovered by them. Luckily for everyone, non-Western civilizations weren’t quite so cowardly. That influence, incidentally, played a major role in stunting the progress of human thought. In fact, this fear influenced the development of religions, cultures, and entire nations. Seife shows how and why some of the greatest Greek minds, including Pythagoras and Aristotle, were horrified by the (non)existence of zero. If you think I’m being hyperbolic again, I’m not.
And Charles Seife, in Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, explains not just why this is the case, but why so many people have been so terrified of a number we all take for granted. That’s true, but it’s also true that dividing by zero utterly destroys logic, mathematics, and our entire understanding of…well, everything. When I asked why not, I was told because the answer was “undefined” or “indeterminate.” I was told as a kid you can’t divide by zero.
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