By: Jim Taylor
Thinking
of nothing
A few weeks ago I quoted some paragraphs from a
Vermont writer named Elayne Clift. When I asked for
her permission, I offered to split my payment with her.
But as I noted, “50% of nothing
is still nothing.”
An interesting
concept, nothing.
Add zero to anything, or
subtract zero from anything, the result is the same – the original number
remains unchanged.
Not so with multiplication and
division.
Multiply something by nothing,
and you end up with nothing, no matter how much you started with. Any number
times zero equals zero.
Divide zero into a million
parts – it’s still zero.
But conversely, I was taught in
school, even if you had very little, if you divide it by nothing, you suddenly
have everything. Any number divided by zero equals
infinity.
Computers, being extremely
literal creations, can’t handle infinity. My spreadsheet program frequently
informs me that it cannot divide by zero.
But without zeroes, my computer
couldn’t function at all.
The origins of nothing
No one really knows who invented zero. Evidence
suggests it evolved in
The ancient Romans didn’t have
a zero. And if you don’t think that was a handicap, try dividing MMCDLXXVIII by DCCCXXVI. (The answer
is III – could you have worked it out in Roman
numerals?)
The lack of a zero led to a
historic legacy of confusion.
The obscure Roman monk named
Dionysius Exiguus who created our calendars split the
years into B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini, the year of our Lord).
But because he didn’t have a zero to work with, his new calendar went directly
from 1 B.C. to 1 A.D. Which meant, 20 centuries later, that
two thousand years did not run out on
Which
suggests that zero – nothing – is still significant enough that it has to be
there.
We humans have difficulty
thinking of nothing.
Astronomers say the universe
burst into being, out of nothing. Our minds boggle. We need a container for
that nothingness. We need someone, or something, to create in that nothingness.
My tradition calls that something “God.”
About what’s not
In writing classes, I encourage students to avoid using
negatives. I say, “Don’t think about an elephant.” Guess what pops into their
minds!
Our minds don’t know how to
not-think about something – we can only switch our thoughts to something
different.
One of the commandments given
to Moses prohibited making any “graven image” of God.
No statues. No pictures. No
descriptions.
To this day, devout Jews will
not write the name God. Because a name is a description.
They will use either a substitute, or they’ll write “G*d.”
According to the Ten
Commandments, it seems, the only way to think of the divine is to think of
nothing.
Maybe zero isn’t so
insignificant after all.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study
groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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