Zeroes and the Infinite
I recently read a book about the history of 0 (that is, the number, zero) and its place in the development of mathematics. The author talks about ancient Greek math towards the beginning of the work, and he suggests that the reason the Greeks had no zero was that they were fundamentally geometers who thought about numbers primarily as measures and mathematics primarily as a study of relative proportions. Ratios don't make much sense when you start to stick zeroes in there; the length of my big toe might be 3/2 as long as your big toe, but it's nonsense to say that anybody's toes could be 4/0 the size of somebody else's (and surely there's no need to compare two things if I've only got one of them, which is essentially what one is doing when one says that the ratio of apples to oranges is 0 to 52--I mean, there just aren't any apples to be dealt with in the first place).The most interesting part of this account is not the math and it's not the history, either (both of which are really quite rudimentary here). Rather, it's the passing mention of the fact that the Greek word for "ratio" is logos. This struck me; I've always taken logos to mean something like "word" or "discourse" or even "reason"--all with very verbal connotations. The reason I was so taken with logos as a mathematical term is because I know it primarily through John 1:1.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
See? Even in its more philosophical uses, logos has clear cultural, Biblical connotations as a word to do with words. This it is; it is much more, as well.
Q offers a good historical account of where the above (KJV) translation came from--namely, the Latin Vulgate, which we presume to have used verbum in the place of logos. That sounds plausible to me, and is the sort of thing that Q would know.
But come on! Why on earth, given all the salient possibilities to do with rationality (in both the logical and the mathematical senses), would you think that the best translation of this little bit of the Gospel--the translation most likely to highlight God's inherent reason, order, and place in nature--is the one where we use the word "word" (or, for that matter, the relatively boring Latin "verbum")? Doesn't it make more sense if you say, "In the beginning was reason and mathematical truth, and these things were with God, and they were God?" That seems far more compelling to me.
Or does this just highlight that I don't really understand the compulsions of religion?
posted by Skay @ 11:02 PM
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