The Meaning of Life is the Game Gene : an Appendix Regarding
Absolutes and Numbers
Geoffrey Hamilton
January 1, 2007
Revised last, October 20, 2007
The other kind of 'absolutes', the so-called universal languages like numbers and
mathematics, get much air time in science publications, television
and in movies like "Contact".
Some people consider these absolutes even though they
only exist by contexts. For example, there is nothing about E=mc2 that
is inherently meaningful to any being whether it be the representation itself, or what it
is representing. In the former case, no one would argue a linguistic representation
is inherently meaningful -
except for people like Heidegger. In order for the latter case to be
inherently meaningful energy, mass and the
speed of light squared must present themselves by whatever instrument used without
the use of context and make those things meaningful to some being somewhere.
This cannot be done - never mind the irony of this being the theory of relativity.
Regarding numbers, even the number one has no meaning in reality except
by context; Look at
'one' golf ball. Or are you looking at many pieces of rubber and plastic and ink? - as someone
who doesn't know golf could assume. An atomic scientist might include the ball's
elements in his context, including an electron's orbit - which could be metres wide.
There is no 'one' if the scientist doesn't decide on a sympathetic context.
Some might argue 'one' is meant as an abstraction and has no relevance to reality.
Considering how fluid thought is, isn't that 'one' also the whole of
a point five, or one thirty-second
of something else? A one cannot be just a one,
a context must be applied. In the end, there cannot be any
absolute; meaning can only be created relatively, and
relatively speaking, at the least, life must be made to mean something.
One of the most passionate and respected absolutists was mathematician
and philosopher, Bertrand Russell. After declaring math to be perfect, absolute and a priori and
the example which philosophy should follow, he says in Mysticism and Logic,
"Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that if such and such a proposition
is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing. It is
essential not to discuss whether the first proposition is really true, and not to mention what the anything is of
which it is supposed to be true.... Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in
which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true."
And as William Durant further comments, "It is a splendid game for those who like it; guaranteed
to 'kill time' as rapidly as chess; it is a new form of solitaire, and should be played as
far as possible from the contaminating touch of things". All games have the same ability as math:
once the rules and other features are set then it can become perfect, absolute and a priori -
relative to the game.
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