Does Zero Exist?
Does zero exist?
If so, then can you point it to me?
Where is it? Can we touch it, feel it, take a picture of it?
If not, then how does it have any impact on our lives?
Why does my life change if I put a zero at the end of my bank balance?
Where is the contradiction?
Either I have to accept that zero is imaginary.
In that case, I should abandon its use so that it cannot influence my life in any way.
But if I cannot do so, I must accept it as real.
That means even if it has no physical presence, it is still part of our lives.
So that means our lives do not just exist in the physical world.
They extend to the world of concepts.
The concepts are entities that exist only in our minds.
They do not have an isolated existence like you and me, the carrot I eat, or the laptop I am typing on.
But they exist as extensions of things that have an isolated existence.
For example, look at a wheel.
It is made of rubber, where one end is merged into another.
If you show it to a kid, they will say it's a circle.
Which is true. It is a circle.
But that is not how you looked at it before the kid said it.
A circle is a concept that lives as an extension of the wheel.
In other situations, where the number records are kept from old tires,
this could even be called a zero that helps count something.
Again, the concept of zero lives as an extension of the wheel.
So what is it then? Rubber, Wheel, Circle, or a Zero
Well, the answer is that it is everything. All answers are correct.
It is rubber and a wheel and a circle and zero. All at the same time.
I don't think that whatever it is can be precisely defined.
It could be a toy that kids use to run with.
It could be a cushion used to shield something.
The actual definition is it will have to contain the set of all the purposes that this round black thing can serve.
And since there could be many uses of it that were lost in the past
Or there could be many uses in the future that are yet to be discovered,
The set of purposes for this entity can never be defined.
Hence, this entity cannot be adequately defined.
However, the new uses we will discover for this will come from a concept.
Someone somewhere will discover that a rubber tire has this particular use that nobody thought about earlier.
So, the concepts are the source of creativity.
We can create something new only when we are open to concepts that do not exist physically.
If we accept reality as the things that exist physically, we are living an untruth and shutting the door of creativity.
PS:
Some people might argue that zero is just a language of mathematics.
To which, I would say that I am not referring to the word zero. I am referring to the concept of zero, roughly understood as an absence of anything, a void.