Numbers.

Numbers don't exist. Well, they exist as ideas, as convenient tools humans haveconstructed for describing and dealing with the outside world, but they find no absoluteshadow in matter or energy. We Westerners have it all wrong. One with the world?Everything connected? No causal relationships? These Eastern ideas escape our grasp aswe continue to grapple for the flag on top of the world. The individual is number One,descended from Two parents, with X cars and Y fingers. That makes sense within our established scientific tradition, and this tradition has been quite useful over the years, but many phenomena escape our methods of science and always will until great changes take place.

Consider an apple. It makesperfect sense that this is a single apple, right? Within our limited view of the world wehave no other way of looking at it. Taking a step back, however, we will see that this viewcaptures a piece of the world and dissects it, thereby distorting our sample and ignoringeverything outside of the sample. Embodied within this apple is the entire process of itscreation. It contains its own history, marked in some way by every influence in its life andnon-life. Without trees, or without dirt, or without oxygen, this apple wouldn't exist. Sowe see that the boundary of its skin is a false boundary. We cannot separate this apple fromthe context of its creation and call it a discrete object without severely marring ourunderstanding of its nature.

Relativity stretches our notion of independence even more. One cannot give an absolute, objective account of the world without taking into accountone's perspective and the context of the observations. Quantum mechanics has furthertorn apart our conceptions of quantity and boundary. We've seen how we can dissipateand extend boundaries through causal relationships and stretches of space-time, but thenature of the quanta eludes causality altogether and suggests flat-out transcendence. One event can influence our measurement of another without delay and often force our "line"metaphor for time to double back on itself.

How does this affect our growing reliance upon the binary opposition of digitalinformation and the resulting theoretical frameworks of nature itself? Does this destroythe ultimate relevance of anything digital? Does technology, as a result, defy Easternphilosophy altogether? I don't know, but if anyone figures this one out, drop me ane-mail. ;-)