Science and the number 0
Thursday, 27. July 2006, 14:58:58
Inspired by the book I'm currently reading, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, I got to thinking a little about the number 0. The story of this all-important digit is incredibly interesting and is closely linked with philosophy and Eastern spirituality.
There are many worldviews out there, and they are largely grouped in the religious/spiritual and scientific camps. A religious person of lower cognitive capability and spirituality sees a scientific person as a blasphemer that will go to hell and a naive scientist sees a religious person as an idiot who believes in the equivalent of ghosts and goblins, a big bearded cop in the sky, a white Santa Claus.
Now, what's worth noticing here is that the religion that science condemns is of the naive, dogmatic, fundamentalist variety whereas developmental studies show that religion in the form of spirituality is rediscovered in a post-scientific worldview (it transcends and includes a worldview that considers matter the building block of everything). The problem with science of course is that it cannot differentiate between the pre-rational from the trans-rational (rationality being science), as everything that cannot be studied with scientific instruments (e.g our mind) is subjective and therefore not trustworthy, a pie in the sky.
But as I read Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, it becomes very clear to me that science has some trouble with the history of this mysterious number 0. This number did not exist in Greek and Roman thought as the Greek thinkers asked themselves how nothing could be something. This was a philosophical dilemma, not a mathematical one. So where did the number come from? It in fact originates from Eastern esoterica, from Hindu thinkers.
The sanskrit name of the number is shunya. In the Buddhist system (which developed out of Hinduism) we find the similar-sounding concept of shunyata. This is the idea that at its most fundamental level, in the world of manifestation, nothing substantial is really going on. The system punctures the idea that we have a lot of fixed objects crashing into each other (here's a rock and here's a tree) and that they are all fundamentally, at their core, just ever-changing phenomena that only appear as static as our cognition is trapped in time and space. What the concept of shunyata suggests is that all manifestation are one. Yet at the same time, this oneness displays in numerous ways as identifiable objects. It's nothing (the 0 standing on its own) and everything (the trailing 0s as in 1000) at the same time.
Now, science seems to be moving in this direction too, what with later developments suggesting that matter is indeed a whole lot of nothing (a material whole load of nothing of course), but science is still, for the most part dismissing the spiritual/subjective realms as wishful thinking. But hang on; science could not have became a potent system of thought and investigation without the number 0. Which is a problem, as the number grew out of metaphysics. Leave it to metaphysicians to create an entity that is nothing at all, that cannot be proven by any instrument other than our inquiring mind. The Greeks found it too ridiculous.
Zero, nil, nada, zilch - not real, just a figment of our imagination. Yet our technology, science, which effectively dismisses imagination and subjective experience as unreal, is depending on it. That seems wrong to me. Or maybe I'm reading this entire situation wrong. Just more wishful thinking? I don't know, but it's a fascinating topic nevertheless.
There are many worldviews out there, and they are largely grouped in the religious/spiritual and scientific camps. A religious person of lower cognitive capability and spirituality sees a scientific person as a blasphemer that will go to hell and a naive scientist sees a religious person as an idiot who believes in the equivalent of ghosts and goblins, a big bearded cop in the sky, a white Santa Claus.
Now, what's worth noticing here is that the religion that science condemns is of the naive, dogmatic, fundamentalist variety whereas developmental studies show that religion in the form of spirituality is rediscovered in a post-scientific worldview (it transcends and includes a worldview that considers matter the building block of everything). The problem with science of course is that it cannot differentiate between the pre-rational from the trans-rational (rationality being science), as everything that cannot be studied with scientific instruments (e.g our mind) is subjective and therefore not trustworthy, a pie in the sky.
But as I read Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, it becomes very clear to me that science has some trouble with the history of this mysterious number 0. This number did not exist in Greek and Roman thought as the Greek thinkers asked themselves how nothing could be something. This was a philosophical dilemma, not a mathematical one. So where did the number come from? It in fact originates from Eastern esoterica, from Hindu thinkers.
The sanskrit name of the number is shunya. In the Buddhist system (which developed out of Hinduism) we find the similar-sounding concept of shunyata. This is the idea that at its most fundamental level, in the world of manifestation, nothing substantial is really going on. The system punctures the idea that we have a lot of fixed objects crashing into each other (here's a rock and here's a tree) and that they are all fundamentally, at their core, just ever-changing phenomena that only appear as static as our cognition is trapped in time and space. What the concept of shunyata suggests is that all manifestation are one. Yet at the same time, this oneness displays in numerous ways as identifiable objects. It's nothing (the 0 standing on its own) and everything (the trailing 0s as in 1000) at the same time.
Now, science seems to be moving in this direction too, what with later developments suggesting that matter is indeed a whole lot of nothing (a material whole load of nothing of course), but science is still, for the most part dismissing the spiritual/subjective realms as wishful thinking. But hang on; science could not have became a potent system of thought and investigation without the number 0. Which is a problem, as the number grew out of metaphysics. Leave it to metaphysicians to create an entity that is nothing at all, that cannot be proven by any instrument other than our inquiring mind. The Greeks found it too ridiculous.
Zero, nil, nada, zilch - not real, just a figment of our imagination. Yet our technology, science, which effectively dismisses imagination and subjective experience as unreal, is depending on it. That seems wrong to me. Or maybe I'm reading this entire situation wrong. Just more wishful thinking? I don't know, but it's a fascinating topic nevertheless.
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