異端の数ゼロ―数学・物理学が恐れるもっとも危険な概念 [単行本]

この数字がすべてを狂わせる――。バビロニアに生まれ、以来、無を拒絶するアリストテレス哲学を転覆させ、神の存在を脅かすが故にキリスト教会を震撼させ、今日なおコンピュータ・システムに潜む時限爆弾として技術者をおののかせるゼロ。この数字がもたらす無と無限は、いかに人類の営みを揺さぶり続け、文明を琢磨したのか? 数学・物理学・天文学から宗教・哲学までを駆け巡る、一気読み必至の極上ポピュラー・サイエンス --このテキストは、 文庫 版に関連付けられています。

本書は、史上もっとも危険な概念―ゼロの“伝記”である。バビロニアに生まれたゼロは、そのなかに潜む“無”と“無限”ゆえ、人類の知的営為を揺るがしてきた。ゼロは、古代ギリシアの諸賢によって禁じられ、キリスト教世界では異端視された。パスカル、デカルト、ニュートンらの業績の裏には常にゼロの問題が潜んでいたが、その脅威は、科学が進歩を遂げた現代でも変わりはない。ゼロを追放しなければ、一般相対性理論の無限大問題は解決できないように。歴史を通じて排除の対象でありつづけたが、消えることはなかったゼロ。有用でありながら、多くの矛盾や論理の崩壊をもたらすこの概念の全貌を、まったく新しい切り口で描くポピュラー・サイエンス。

アリストテレスを戦慄させ、近代科学の祖デカルトが否定し、天才アインシュタインが挑んだゼロ。最新のコンピューター・システムをも破壊するこの数字の驚異と歴史を描くポピュラー・サイエンス。

The seemingly impossible Zen task--writing a book about nothing--has a loophole: people have been chatting, learning, and even fighting about nothing for millennia. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, by noted science writer Charles Seife, starts with the story of a modern battleship stopped dead in the water by a loose zero, then rewinds back to several hundred years BCE. Some empty-headed genius improved the traditional Eastern counting methods immeasurably by adding zero as a placeholder, which allowed the genesis of our still-used decimal system. It's all been uphill from there, but Seife is enthusiastic about his subject; his synthesis of math, history, and anthropology seduces the reader into a new fascination with the most troubling number.

Why did the Church reject the use of zero? How did mystics of all stripes get bent out of shape over it? Is it true that science as we know it depends on this mysterious round digit? Zero opens up these questions and lets us explore the answers and their ramifications for our oh-so-modern lives. Seife has fun with his format, too, starting with chapter 0 and finishing with an appendix titled "Make Your Own Wormhole Time Machine." (Warning: don't get your hopes up too much.) There are enough graphs and equations to scare off serious numerophobes, but the real story is in the interactions between artists, scientists, mathematicians, religious and political leaders, and the rest of us--it seems we really do have nothing in common. --Rob Lightner
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In a lively and literate first book, science journalist Seife takes readers on a historical, mathematical and scientific journey from the infinitesimal to the infinite. With clever devices such as humorously titled and subtitled chapters numbered from zero to infinity, Seife keeps the tone as light as his subject matter is deep. By book's end, no reader will dispute Seife's claim that zero is among the most fertile--and therefore most dangerous--ideas that humanity has devised. Equally powerful and dangerous is its inseparable counterpart, infinity, for both it and zero invoke to many the divine power that created an infinite universe from the void. The power of zero lies in such a contradiction, and civilization has struggled with it, alternatively seeking to ban and to embrace zero and infinity. The clash has led to holy wars and persecutions, philosophical disputes and profound scientific discoveries. In addition to offering fascinating historical perspectives, Seife's prose provides readers who struggled through math and science courses a clear window for seeing both the powerful techniques of calculus and the conundrums of modern physics: general relativity, quantum mechanics and their marriage in string theory. In doing so, Seife, this entertaining and enlightening book reveals one of the roots of humanity's deepest uncertainties and greatest insights. BOMC selection. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

A concise and appealing look at the strangest number in the universe and its continuing role as one of the great paradoxes of human thought

The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshiped it, and the Church used it to fend off heretics. Now, as Y2K fever rages, it threatens a technological apocalypse. For centuries the power of zero savored of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. For zero, infinity's twin, is not like other numbers. It is both nothing and everything.

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. Zero has pitted East against West and faith against reason, and its intransigence persists in the dark core of a black hole and the brilliant flash of the Big Bang. Today, zero lies at the heart of one of the biggest scientific controversies of all time, the quest for a theory of everything.

Readers of Fermat's Enigma, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, Seeing and Believing, and Longitudewill find the revealingly illustrated Zero freshly informative, easy to understand, and--infinitely--fascinating.
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Charles Seife, a U.S. correspondent for the international magazine New Scientist, has also written for Scientific American, The Economist, Science, Wired UK, The Sciences, and numerous other publications. He holds an M.S. in mathematics from Yale University and his areas of research include probability theory and artificial intelligence. He lives in Washington, D.C.
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サイフェ,チャールズ
サイエンス・ライター。イェール大学で数学の修士号を取得。「ニュー・サイエンティスト」記者。「エコノミスト」、「サイエンティフィック・アメリカン」、「サイエンス」などにも寄稿する。ワシントンDC在住

林 大
1967年、千葉県生まれ。東京大学経済学部卒(本データはこの書籍が刊行された当時に掲載されていたものです)