The nothing that is. A natural history of zero (Q2736987)

This book treats the phenomenon of the emptiness, the never, the void, as an entity over all the ages of civilised humanity, certainly not only in a mathematical, meta-mathematical, or even a pseudo-mathematical way, but beyond all in a cultural way in all its utterances.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThe book consists of seventeen chapters (numbered \(0,1,\dots,16)\), a list of literature and a register. Chapter 1 deals with notational expressions for the zero; chapter 2 deals with the greek hereditary and culture; chapter 3 tells about Archimedes; chapter 4 treats Alexander the Great and the Hindus and India over the ages; the next three chapters deal with the appearances of the zero, the void, etc., in cultural and mathematical aspects; chapter 8 has to do with the Maya's and their calendar; chapter 9 produces the word for zero in several languages (reviewer's remark: the word for zero in Dutch is ``nul'', not ``nullo'') and much more; counting and mathematics around zero we find in chapter 10 like also occultism and measurement; in chapter 11 concepts of differentiation, limits, even the function \(f(x)=x^\wedge x\) is treated; philosophical and physics contributions are to be found in chapter 12, Plato's Atlantis is treated too; chapters 13 and 14 the reviewer does find exaggerate in its nature and not of a real concern; chapter 15 on the other hand handles number theory and games; chapters 0 and 16 are introductory and summarizing in its nature.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThe literature-list lacks \textit{D. M. Burton}'s `History of Mathematics' 3rd ed. (1997; Zbl 0913.01001) and \textit{G. Ifrah}'s `From One to Zero', (1985; Zbl 0589.01001) but on the whole it is informative.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThe reviewer is left with mixed feelings. He judges the book to be a good source of information but also rather verbose and long-winded at some places; the last observation has nothing to do with the translation from the English into the German language which seems to be alright.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEFor a review of the English original see Zbl 0984.01001.