Nothing is everything, therefore there is nothing it cannot be.
Reading like an insoluble Zen riddle, this is also the premise of
Barrow's latest tour-de-force in the world of mathematics. Tackling
it more as a detective than the Cambridge research professor he is,
he uses common examples and a style of writing found in thrillers
to pull the reader through the chinks of reason into the greater
reality which may or may not ultimately govern our world. Barrow's
journey to uncover the origins of zero and the concept of, quite
literally, nothing, starts with the Mayans, the ancient Greeks and
the Phoenicians before touching on the Middle Ages on route to our
times. In the process he lays open the fact that the development of
mathematics is closely woven in faith, culture, organized religion,
the concept of God and one's personal belief system. Whether he is
busy explaining why Einstein needed to have space filled with
either of just how Michelson measured the speed of light, Barrow
brims with enthusiasm. It was Galileo who famously said
'Mathematics is the language in which God wrote the universe'. It
has taken Barrow, however, to make it truly accessible. (Kirkus UK)
From the zeros of the mathematician to the void of the philosophers, from Shakespeare to the empty set, from the ether to the quantum vacuum, from being and nothingness to creatio exnihilo, there is much ado about nothing at the heart of things. Recent exciting discoveries in astronomy are shown to shed new light on the nature of the vacuum and its dramatic effect upon the explanation of the Universe.
This remarkable book ranges over every nook and cranny of nothingness to reveal how the human mind has had to make something of nothing in every field of human enquiry.
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