The effects of nearly forty years of insulin dependent diabetes and general aging upon my physical ability. A weakening in the lower limbs and loss of balance slows walks to a crawl with the aid of a walking stick. Some of Abbotsford’s less patient new generation drivers even swear at me rudely and loudly if I slow their progress making turns around crosswalk protected intersections. In a later Post, if I can manage it without too much complaining, I may outline a typical good day and describe how it is controlled by my insulin, food, and exercise therapy regime;- The long hot rainless summer had its effect. The temperature, humidity and poor air quality kept both my wife and me pretty well confined to our apartment, which we kept within reason with partial air conditioning and fans. Even early morning walks affected my breathing and caused further debilitation;
Shirley and I have had a lot of togetherness since before our marriage more than 60 years ago. As we age and our circle of acquaintance becomes smaller we tend to be loners rather than to seek out group activities. One might think that would provide more time and incentive to pursue this kind of communication; in fact it seems our lack of interaction with others, even in our apartment complex, reduces the selection of topics to talk or write about.
The old man’s niece, Linda, one of his many fascinating next generation family members, completed her 60th year early this November. She always seems to find some way to encourage me to some sort of mental or physical activity. This time, in thanking me for my birthday greetings she wondered whether, having reached age 60, she would now have to wait until age 61 before beginning her 7th decade. And the answer, I said, was that her 6th decade ended and her seventh decade began at the same moment, which occurred at the moment when those 60 years ended and her 61st year began.
Of course that started me wondering again about the very concept of time and space, about past, present and future, the speed of its arrival and departure and about the nature of the number 0 (zero), or “nothing”.
I checked some of the early classical philosophers and mathematicians on the concept of the number 0 and found an excellent Introduction to Arithmetic written by Nicomachus of Gerasa towards the end of the first century AD. I wished that some of my public school teachers had explained arithmetic to me in that conceptual way when I was a kid. He started out stressing the difference between odd and even numbers between 1 and 9. I found, however, that nowhere did he refer to 0 as a number, though his tables and examples did include the numbers 10 and 100, which end with 0. Incidentally among his first lessons was the fact that any number chosen at random is one-half the sum of the numbers preceding and following it. Say you pick the number 123. You will find that number is equal to 122+124/2. Though I haven’t reasoned out why, I sense that and the rest of the textbook would have made the subject in school much easier to understand and work in practical ways than the methods used in my school days. And if you go into negative numbering, coming later in his material, which I have only scanned, you will find the rule still works and that if you add -1 and +1, you still get nothing, or 0.
Then I checked out some of the contributors to Wikipedia on the history of year numbering systems. One writer makes much of the fact that historians have never included a year zero in the calendar system. That does not surprise me; mathematicians and philosophers would not have been able to multiply 0 by 12 months to make a traditional year, whether based on lunar or solar calculations because they would still end up with nothing. The lack of a year “0” means, the Wikipedia writer said, citing as example, “that between January 1, 500 BC and January 1, AD 500, there are 999 years: 500 years BC, and 499 years AD preceding 500.” To my way of thinking the omission of a year 0 does not do that, for the year cannot be measured from its beginning to the beginning of the next year, but from beginning (the moment it starts) to the moment it ends on December 31. So there is a regular progression forward in the numbering if he said instead “that between January 1, 500 BC and December 31, AD 500 there are 1000 years…..”
No matter how we calculate it, existence will go on in an endless present with no numerical zero or infinity in a great circle of life until that life ends. And so will The Old Man’s Post when his own circle closes and I don’t expect there will be any residuals. The rest is mystery.
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