The Nothing That Is - Robert Kaplan

We may just now have walked past the whole point of our story...For all our thought, not only the mathematical with its recursive abstracting, is drawn toward formalism, as if our having drained it of the human made it god-like. Only after we've sold our souls to this figure do we realize that its hollow, adding nothing to what we knew and by multiplying apercus out to vast generalities, liable to set our understanding at nothing. Is this where the Great Paradigm was leading us- or is formalism rather an occupational hazard of the mind, which is prone to mistake the ever-enlarging context within which content is held for the disappearance of content altogether? So, the signs that facilitate thinking eventually come to be taken for its substance.

I really wanted, and fully expected, to enjoy this book, but I came away disappointed. I am curious and appreciative of history and mathematics. A history of the zero seemed a perfect read for me. The book fails in both its history and its math. It claims that only a basic understanding of high school math is required to understand the concepts in the book. As someone who has taken calculus at the college level, I found much of the math difficult to comprehend. Even worse, it didn't to be directly related to the history of the zero, but simply the author taking liberties to venture off in his own areas of interest. The book fails more so in the area of history. The actual history of the zero does not make up a majority of the book. It seems the actual history could have been covered in a chapter or two.

This is an academic treatise that is likely to only appeal to fellow academicians.