The Book of Nothing by John D Barrow

Contrary to the "unfailing scepticism" of his offspring, Barrow has written a fascinating and (up to page 173) compelling book about nothing. He touches on theology and modern art. But the main thrust of his book is scientific. We learn that the first symbol for zero was invented in Babylon 4,000 years ago. The Maya had a series of hieroglyphs for zero. However, the notion of every number being represented by 10 symbols, "probably the most successful intellectual innovation ever devised by humans", came from India.

The first to create a sustained physical vacuum was the mathematician Torricelli, who in the 1640s found that atmospheric pressure would sustain only 76cm of mercury at sea level. In the following decade, there came the celebrated experiment in Magdeburg with evacuated hemispheres. When Pascal became fascinated by vacuums, he encountered hostility from Jesuits who insisted that nothingness was an abnegation of the Almighty's power. Oddly enough, 17th-century thinking on "the Ether" that occupied vacuums is not too far from modern ideas about dark matter. On page 173, the attention of non-specialist readers may begin to wander when Barrow allows equations to invade his text. But even here humour can be found, as in a diagram illustrating "the null graph". It is a blank half-page.