What conceptual blind spot kept the ancient Greeks (unlike the Indians and Maya) from developing a concept of zero? Why did St. Augustine equate nothingness with the Devil? What tortuous means did 17th-century scientists employ in their attempts to create a vacuum? And why do contemporary quantum physicists believe that the void is actually seething with subatomic activity? ...(展开全部)

What conceptual blind spot kept the ancient Greeks (unlike the Indians and Maya) from developing a concept of zero? Why did St. Augustine equate nothingness with the Devil? What tortuous means did 17th-century scientists employ in their attempts to create a vacuum? And why do contemporary quantum physicists believe that the void is actually seething with subatomic activity? ...(展开全部)

One of our foremost mathematicians and cosmologists – John Barrow has a proven ability to make complex ideas easily accessible to the reader. Beginning with ancient civilizations, he explores how the zero came into being, its rocky reception in Europe, and the early avoidance and eventual acceptance of the void by Christianity. Investigating the concept of nothing through the w...(展开全部)

One of our foremost mathematicians and cosmologists – John Barrow has a proven ability to make complex ideas easily accessible to the reader. Beginning with ancient civilizations, he explores how the zero came into being, its rocky reception in Europe, and the early avoidance and eventual acceptance of the void by Christianity. Investigating the concept of nothing through the w...(展开全部)

The marvellous complexity of the Universe emerges from several deep laws and a handful of fundamental constants that fix its shape, scale, and destiny. There is a deep structure to the world which at the same time is simple, elegant, and beautiful. Where did these laws and these constants come from? And why are the laws so fruitful when written in the language of mathematics? P...(展开全部)

The marvellous complexity of the Universe emerges from several deep laws and a handful of fundamental constants that fix its shape, scale, and destiny. There is a deep structure to the world which at the same time is simple, elegant, and beautiful. Where did these laws and these constants come from? And why are the laws so fruitful when written in the language of mathematics? P...(展开全部)

A Wall Street Journal Best Business Book of 2012 A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012 In this revealing account of how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of World War II, George Dyson illuminates the nature of digital computers, the lives of those who brought them into existence, and how code took over the world. In the 1940s and ‘50s, a small group of men and...(展开全部)

“It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence,” twenty-four-year-old Alan Turing announced in 1936. In Turing’s Cathedral , George Dyson focuses on a small group of men and women, led by John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who built one of the first computers to realize Alan Turing’s v...(展开全部)

“It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence,” twenty-four-year-old Alan Turing announced in 1936. In Turing’s Cathedral , George Dyson focuses on a small group of men and women, led by John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who built one of the first computers to realize Alan Turing’s v...(展开全部)

A Wall Street Journal Best Business Book of 2012 A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012 In this revealing account of how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of World War II, George Dyson illuminates the nature of digital computers, the lives of those who brought them into existence, and how code took over the world. In the 1940s and ‘50s, a small group of men and...(展开全部)