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88th out of 132 books
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154 voters
The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe
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...more
Paperback, 384 pages
Published
August 13th 2002
by Vintage
(first published 2000)
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Sep 18, 2007
Nathan
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Stop it, you're killing me.
Shelves:
science,
science-physics-astronomy
Quantum physics, if it is real, requires that there be no such thing as nothing. Ergo, nothing is real. And maybe, even, everything is nothing. And John D. Barrow gets 3 stars instead of 4 for assuming I already had six Ph.D's by the time I decided to read this book. (Did anybody read Impossibility: The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits? Yeah. Exactly.) And despite the fact that I didn't understand the majority of what he was saying (though I did feel a wisp of air over my head at time...more
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Barrow, John D. Book of Nothing, The: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe (2000)
How nothing became something
"Nothing is Real." --The Beatles, "Strawberry Fields Forever"
As quoted by Professor Barrow on page 8, this is a pun on what the Beatles had in mind, and is in essence what this book is all about. Nothing is real in the sense that it is no longer the nothing that it once was. It is actually "something." On the next page, to further illustrate the point, Ba...more
How nothing became something
"Nothing is Real." --The Beatles, "Strawberry Fields Forever"
As quoted by Professor Barrow on page 8, this is a pun on what the Beatles had in mind, and is in essence what this book is all about. Nothing is real in the sense that it is no longer the nothing that it once was. It is actually "something." On the next page, to further illustrate the point, Ba...more
Hay muchas ideas interesantes en este libro sobre lo que significa el vacío y la nada. Particularmente me gustó la parte que analiza cómo conceptualizaban el creo en diversas culturas antiguas y que implicaciones tiene para su forma de pensar.
Sin embargo, aunque el libro explica simple y claramente varios conceptos complicados, no tiene mucho carisma y en general se siente plano. Hay varios puntos donde el autor no es nada sutil al expresar ciertas ideas personales que no vienen al caso y la le...more
Sin embargo, aunque el libro explica simple y claramente varios conceptos complicados, no tiene mucho carisma y en general se siente plano. Hay varios puntos donde el autor no es nada sutil al expresar ciertas ideas personales que no vienen al caso y la le...more
well...some books are rather to say fact book and i am amazed reading this new book from John.D.Barrrow. the author takes us through a journey of old facts that we feel amazed to know of some real cool data's and their existence and all linked to one particular entity "Nothingness".
Its a story with really no fiction added to it
Its a story with really no fiction added to it
There's a richness here, if you can sift through the sometimes credulous etymological work and the later, more dense scientific explorations (those would be the "latest ideas" hinted at by the subtitle). A good volume to begin research with, but perhaps not the final word on its incredibly rich & diverse topic.
Oh my god, this book was so weird. It in fact is a book about nothing! In every few sentences the author mentioned "nothing" as if it were a human being that I ended up getting confused. John D. Barrow talked about his whole theory that nothing is actually something, but since nobody can see it or prove it it's considered nothing. That's basically said with three hundred eighty-something pages, scientific vocabulary, mayan theory, math, philosophy, physics (which confused the hell out of me), an...more
Good, accessible, and quick
Not shabby.
The Book of Nothing, is, you guessed it, about...nothing.
In a (quasi-)scientific way.
As a fervid fan of Ende's Neverending Story, I used to obsess about nothing when I was a kid. So I couldn't resist buying (and reading) this book.
Interesting and enjoyable (though not as much as my childish obsessions), if you are interested in nothing. ;-) (just be glad I didn't make more nothing-jokes. It was hard to resist nothing.)
In a (quasi-)scientific way.
As a fervid fan of Ende's Neverending Story, I used to obsess about nothing when I was a kid. So I couldn't resist buying (and reading) this book.
Interesting and enjoyable (though not as much as my childish obsessions), if you are interested in nothing. ;-) (just be glad I didn't make more nothing-jokes. It was hard to resist nothing.)
Interesting, but gives too much credence and importance to religion, unnecessarily capitalises "god" and uses ludicrous monikers such a "BC" and "AD"...
I accidently stumbled upon this book at library & thought it was just meant to be & i had to read it. I had to return to library before i finished it. Hard read for me but definitely interesting.
Read just a few pages and have presently fallen in love with the presentation. Looking forward to own a copy.
Everything about nothing.
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John D. Barrow is a professor of mathematical sciences and director of the Millennium Mathematics Project at Cambridge University and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He lives in Cambridge, UK.
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“Turing attended Wittgenstein's lectures on the philosophy of mathematics in Cambridge in 1939 and disagreed strongly with a line of argument that Wittgenstein was pursuing which wanted to allow contradictions to exist in mathematical systems. Wittgenstein argues that he can see why people don't like contradictions outside of mathematics but cannot see what harm they do inside mathematics. Turing is exasperated and points out that such contradictions inside mathematics will lead to disasters outside mathematics: bridges will fall down. Only if there are no applications will the consequences of contradictions be innocuous. Turing eventually gave up attending these lectures. His despair is understandable. The inclusion of just one contradiction (like 0 = 1) in an axiomatic system allows any statement about the objects in the system to be proved true (and also proved false). When Bertrand Russel pointed this out in a lecture he was once challenged by a heckler demanding that he show how the questioner could be proved to be the Pope if 2 + 2 = 5. Russel replied immediately that 'if twice 2 is 5, then 4 is 5, subtract 3; then 1 = 2. But you and the Pope are 2; therefore you and the Pope are 1'! A contradictory statement is the ultimate Trojan horse.”
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