Nothingness

November 26th, 2008 at 1:26 · Filed Under Mathematics, Philosophy 

I tried to blog nothing at all this month, but turns out I have something to write. Behold the mighty addiction of blogging. I look at blogging at another way other than getting my rants across the world. But, this is not the purpose of this post. Nope, I am not going to write about blogging. Yes, I am going to write nothing!

Why am I writing and then saying myself write nothing? To be precise, I am going to rant about nothingness.

Every life is born to the world with nothing. We are born naked, without wealth and nothing at all but love from our parents. We depart the world taking nothing with us. Not even a cent, not even a tiny bit of memory. But we leave behind love, memories and sagas for our children to continue.

Last week, I wrote a post about nothing after watching Kung Fu Panda with my family. We had a good laugh. The secret in a secret recipe is nothing, no secret at all. What can we learn from nothing? I look at nothing really seriously and with utter respect. It is a great knowledge, a great ancient knowledge.

In my early travels to many countries, I met a few karate masters. They told me a lot of karate secrets. One of the karate masters who I met in Taiwan told me, “Empty your mind and body. Move with emptiness. You will be swift and strong.” The emptiness is analogous to nothingness. The secret decrypted looks like this, “To defeat your enemy, you must train to the stage where your mind and body become one. You fear no death then you will be stronger than your enemy.” That’s one of my interpretation. I hope I am able to discuss my understanding with him. He passed away a few years ago, leaving the secret of nothingness behind.

I am not going to write about karate or martial arts either. But nothingness and its corresponding theory or philosophy become the foundation of martial arts, especially Taijiquan.

What is nothing or nothingness?

Well, I found out plenty of real facts about 0 in the book, “50 mathematical ideas you really need to know”. I wrote about the book here. For all the years we studied mathematics in school but never been told the fascinating facts of 0. What a math class!

In math, 0 or zero denotes nothing or nothingness! About 2400 years ago, the Chinese civilization had already understood and used 0 in mathematics. In seventh century, Indian mathematician Brahmagupta treated 0 as a number.

According to the book, here’s some math lesson:

It is straight forward for addition and subtraction:

0 + 7 = 7

and

0 = 7 – 7

And any numbers multiplied by 0, the result is 0.

28 / 7 = 4

and we can cross-multiply to write as

28 = 4 x 7

Now, what about 0 divided by 7?

0 / 7 = a

and cross-multiply equivalent is

0 = a x 7

Because any numbers multiplied by 0, the result is 0, so a must be 0 in this case.

But when

7 / 0 = b

the danger arises. In 12th century, Indian mathematician Bhaskara suggested a number divided by 0 was infinity. So 0 leads to infinity, ∞.

How?

A number divided by a very small number resulted a very large number. 7 divided by a tenth is 70, divided by a hundredth is 700, divided by a billionth is 7 billions, and so on… The ultimate smallness is 0. Consequently the answer should be infinity!

The Indian mathematical text Surya Prajnapti (c. 400 BC) classifies all numbers into three sets: enumerable, innumerable, and infinite. The Isha Upanishad of the Yajurveda (c. 4th to 3rd century BC) states that “if you remove a part from infinity or add a part to infinity, still what remains is infinity”. (Source: Wikipedia)

Of course, there are earlier discoveries made by other civilizations, e.g. The Babylonians. I am not going to mention all of them. If you are interested to know more, go buy the book. It is a worthy collection if you value knowledge.

Both Indian and Chinese civilization had contributed to both math and science as early as 5000 years ago. China has made enormous advancement in aerospace technology and recently India has launched its very first space vehicle into orbit. The Indians and the Chinese deserve respects. Comparing the 5000 years of Chinese civilization and culture to the merely less than 650 years of history, a bloody idiot (and his cronies) dared to look down on us and called us squatters.

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Comments

2 Responses to “Nothingness”

  • 尉迟书贤 on November 26th, 2008 4:54 1

    Hi Adrian,

    I know you are busy with your thesis so I tried to comment nothing. But looks like you have successfully provoked me to comment. An excellent post that motivates deep thinking. You relate to Taijiquan. How’s so?

    书贤

  • Nothing | Truth on November 26th, 2008 12:24 2

    [...] of my favorite blogger, Adrian, did a blog entry on Nothingness, I decided to chip in [...]

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