Amir D. Aczel (1950–2015)

Summary: The prehistoric cave paintings of Western Europe are one of the most enduring mysteries of archeology and paleoanthropology. Painted between 32,000 and 12,000 years ago, the painted animals and symbols are extraordinary - representative not only of symbolic thought in our ancestors, but also of deep dedication - for they are most frequently in deep, nearly inaccessible reaches of caves - surely a daunting prospect for a Cro-Magnon artist lacking modern high-powered flashlights. show more Furthermore, while each cave varies slightly in its content, the style is remarkably similar, even though two caves may be separated by 20,000 years and half a continent. Many explanations for the purpose of the paintings have been put forward over the years, and in the book, Aczel discusses the merits of several of these hypotheses, but ultimately acknowledges that we can never truly know what these early artists were thinking, and that the caves can only give us the smallest glimpse into the mindset of early man.

Review: I really enjoyed the first half of this book. In it, Aczel describes the various painted caves, and gives a very good overview of the type and variety of its art, as well as a very good impression of its grandeur and wonder - which is especially nice for those of us who have never been fortunate enough to see a painted cave. I do wish there had been more photographs (there *are* 16 color plates in the center), for as well as Aczel tries to describe them, something is always lost in translating pictures to words. Plus, having the pictures as diagrams in the text would have been helpful for times when I was trying to compare his text to actual pictures, and couldn't make the two match (for instance, he says that one of the spotted horses in the cave at Peche Merle has a red fish on its back, which I am just not seeing at all.) But, overall, I learned a lot about the cave paintings, and since that was my main purpose in reading the book, that at least was a success.

Where it broke down for me is when Aczel started getting into the various interpretations of what the cave art means. Aczel is a man with a point of view. I get that it's impossible not to have an opinion about the cave paintings; this is not impartial journalistic non-fiction, and there is one interpretation of the cave paintings that he thinks is right, so he structured his book accordingly. However, I didn't feel like he made his case especially convincingly, often dismissing other theories and theorists out of hand, without fully dismantling their arguments. (He seemed to have a particular bone to pick with Jean Clottes, another scholar of prehistory.) For instance, he dismisses the idea that the paintings were a form of hunting magic because very few of the animals are depicted as wounded. Personally, I think this shows a lack of imagination as to how the hunting magic may have worked; the relative lack of paintings of the most common prey species (reindeer and ibex) is a much more damning argument.

The theory he does favor suggests that the paintings are a representation of a worldview that focused on duality, particularly of sexual duality, with paintings of bison (female) being frequently paired with paintings of horses (male), and with these animals being accompanied by various signs and symbols that have also been classified as male or female. While I have no real opinion on the validity of this or any other theory (not being an archaeological expert), Aczel certainly seems to be more lenient about the weaknesses of his pet theory than he is for any other, and as such, his argument was never entirely convincing.

I also think the subtitle is overblown - the "real-life Indiana Jones" was a French abbé named Henri Breuil, who became the first real expert on paleolithic art; the "renegade scholar" is André Leroi-Gourhan, who I'm certain is highly intelligent, although I'm not sure that having a new interpretation of existing data really qualifies one as a "renegade". Finally, I think the mystery of the cave art is far from "decoded"... multiple (mostly untestable) explanations for the paintings still exist, and perhaps that's for the best; I'm okay with leaving human history with a little bit of a sense of mystery and wonder. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: If you're interested in the topic and are looking for a readable source of basic information, this book will suit your needs quite well. If you're looking for a balanced or well-argued examination of competing interpretations and theories... not so much. show less

To begin with, I really did want to like this book. While somewhat math-phobic during my academic career, I've developed a casual interest in pop math and science bookssince finishing undergrad math requirements, and so on that account, I was curious about the source of our numbering system and the use of zero. And when it seemed that the story was told travelogue-style, I was also intrigued, as concept-driven travel narrative (a la Bill Bryson or Tony Horwitz) is also a favorite non-fiction show more format of mine.

After a couple chapters, though, my interest began to wane. I'm not sure who the expected audience of this story was, but surely just about anyone could be expected to understand the basic principles of, say, prime numbers that he lays out in the middle of a retelling of his childhood. While I think this is an attempt to make sure everyone's on the same page mathematically, in order to make the revolutionary quality of zero/zeroness more apparent, it feels clumsily done. If it were fiction, I'd call it random info-dumping and poor world-building.

But anyway, the travel narrative part is moderately interesting, if a little more focused on the exoticism of "Eastern" thought and religion than seems reasonable. Claiming to have no working knowledge of Hinduism and Buddhism prior to searching for the origins of zero in India, the author nonetheless makes the rather interesting claim that zero was naturally an "Eastern" idea and an obvious product of Buddhism, which the all too literal-minded "West" just couldn't have developed. Now I won't make any counterclaims, exactly, but it seems unnecessary to use stereotypical East/West claims like this and I'd have liked a more in-depth and nuanced treatment of the philosophies of religions from both hemispheres, if such a claim were to be made central.

More bothersomely, the author also appears to overeager to defame another academic with whom he clashes over the care of the earliest record of zero he ultimately rediscovers--giving both her name and a photo. While it's possible that woman was really the malevolent, greedy, would-be history-destroyer he depicts, I really doubt it very much. Besides which, the "evidences" he presents for her wickedness don't hold water for me, personally, as they don't show her doing anything immoral or damaging to the item in question; if anything, she seemed surprisingly willing to collaborate and he far too quick to suspect the worst and insist on his own importance. Anything that smacks of a vendetta is really very off-putting in any personal writing, but it feels especially egregious in this instance, and it rather colored the rest of my reading.

While I'm still interested in the topic of the book and am glad to have more background knowledge on it, I don't think I'll keep this book. I also really wish he would have went more into the origins of the "Hindu-Arabic" numbers we use today, as both the subtitle and introductory materials implied, and hope to find an accessible work on that topic in the future. show less

I really wanted to like this book. Aczel is a most engaging author when discussing the history of mathematics in the west - his prose shines, his explanations are lucid, and his enthusiasm infectious. His description of a seminal childhood event that led him to his love of mathematics and numbers is simply charming.

But the book falls apart whenever it turns to its main thesis - that the concept of zero was invented in the east. For one, Aczel wishes he were living in a Dan Brown potboiler, show more with the result that readers have to deal with far too much overblown prose for situations that really aren't that momentous. Second, he suffers from a case of Orientalism that wouldn't be out of place in the Victorian Era. I'd be hard pressed to think of another book authored in the 21st century that relied so heavily on (inaccurate and offensive) tropes of the "Eastern mind." This is patronizing both to Asians (witness his repeated astonishment that the continent's pre-modern peoples noticed basic phenomenal characteristics of the world such as the four basic elements and eight cardinal directions--Well done, brown people!) and Caucasians, whom he paints as being spiritually incapable of envisioning concepts such as infinity or zero. There may be something to his thesis that religious philosophy led to the creation of the concept of zero, but the way he cherry picks history to fit his preferred interpretation - that this could only occur in Asia, because Buddhism - makes it appear more crackpot than it may, in fact, be.

The entire house of cards comes tumbling down in the final 60 pages, which are devoted to a hamhanded character assassination of an Italian archaeologist to whom he mentions his find, and who--the horror!--has the temerity to recognize and share his enthusiasm for it. Cue page upon page of handwringing in which Aczel impugns her competence, her motives, and her integrity. Why is she so eager to study the artifact, he asks over and over. Clearly nefarious motives are at work! Or, more likely, the archaeologist was simply eager to apply her expertise to an interesting artifact that Aczel--an author of pop science books about mathematics--is unqualified to examine or preserve. His protestations might have been slightly more convincing had he, at any point in the narrative, outlined a potential trajectory for the artifact once he located it, but it's clear he never thought it through that far.

It's also clear he wants readers to sympathize with him, but his juvenile nastiness just makes him come off like a dick. Por ejemplo: "As if to taunt me (or so I imagined) she sent me messages...from time to time, describing what she was doing with the inscription. 'My students and I have just completed a 3-D study of [the artifact],' she wrote. ... I tried to assess the danger. What was [she] after?" I dunno, dude. Maybe a fellow academic to geek out with?

Final verdict: Finding Zero is readable, and quite enjoyable when Aczel's discussing the history of mathematics in the west. But he's far too enamored of his far-too-underdeveloped thesis concerning mathematics in the east to be enjoyable, let alone credible. This, combined with the pettiness of the book's conclusion, makes Finding Zero a library loaner for anyone considering reading it. I imagine Aczel's other books on mathematics might be more grounded, and thus better written and more enjoyable, than this offering. show less

"Beautiful" is not a word I would typically apply to a book that refers so often to topics that I try to avoid: topics like mathematics and quantum physics. But Amir Aczel is such a graceful writer, one able to translate profound ideas in to simple concepts for the average reader (like me) that "beautiful" is, indeed, the word that comes to mind.
I love that the premise of this book is not that God exists; rather, the author explains how there is really nothing to show that God does NOT show more exist. His tools are math, science, logic and philosophy, and his reasoning is brilliant.
There is nothing sappy about this book, as a reader might have feared (justifiably, considering what's typically out there on the topic of God's existence). Instead, Aczel is a very straightforward writer and thinker.
I checked this book out of the library and liked it so much I immediately ordered my own copy to keep. show less