Zero

After all, half of infinity is still infinity. Thus, the value of being a Christian is infinite. Now what happens if you are an atheist? If you are correct—there is no God—you gain nothing from being right.

Probability theory was invented to help rich aristocrats win more money with their gambling. Pascal’s theory was extremely successful,

What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, everything in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything. —BLAISE PASCAL, PENSÉES

with Cartesian coordinates every geometric object—squares, triangles, wavy lines—could be represented by an equation, a mathematical relationship.

Descartes realized that he could not start his two reference lines, or axes, with the number 1. That would lead to an error like the one Bede encountered when revamping the calendar. However, unlike Bede, he lived in a Europe where Arabic numerals were common, so he started counting with zero. At the very center of the coordinate system—where the t

Copernicus imagined that the sun was at the center instead, and the planets moved in simple circles. Planets would seem to zoom backward as Earth overtook them; no epicycles were needed. Though Copernicus’s system didn’t agree with the data completely—the circular orbits were wrong, though the heliocentric idea was correct—it was much simpler than

A Polish monk and a physician, Copernicus learned mathematics so he could cast astrological tables, the better to cure his patients with. Along the way, Copernicus’s dabblings with the planets and stars showed him how complicated the old Greek system of tracking the planets was.

It is no coincidence that zero and infinity are linked in the vanishing point. Just as multiplying by zero causes the number line to collapse into a point, the vanishing point has caused most of the universe to sit in a tiny dot. This is a singularity, a concept that became very important later in the history of science—but at this early stage, mat

A point is a zero-dimensional object.