Monday, July 11, 2011

What is "One"?

Whether counting time or the flowers in a garden or the nature of God there is a point when a person runs into "One". And then comes the question: "What is one anyhow?"

The linguist will say that One is a number, a glypth representing a measurement.
The mathematician will say that One is the probability of a number almost certainly probable.
The average person will say that this is all pointless because anyone knows that One is One.
The religious person will think of God as One in contrast to Many. And then the religious persons will argue over whether One means a static lump or a combination of persons all together called One. 

I am caught up in the tangle of trying to count time in order to present an online calendar at http://www.interfaithcalendar.org   The incident bringing on this spasm of words is dealing with paganism and all its appearances in finding the honored days to show up on a calendar.  In a vain attempt to show both northern and southern hemisphere dates for a nature based religion there arises a fog of uncertainty as to who is counting how and what.

Perhaps someone can develop an App that will solve all these mysteries of time counting by religious traditions but I have not seen any drift in that direction.

In the interim time just keeps happening. One day at a time, they say. Or One millisecond at a time for the more detail minded person who will likely shave it even further. As I deal with ordinary human survivors the role of the marking points of special days rises in significance. To this point religions have done the best job of creating those marking point events.

Delton