January 24, 2003
1 + 1 = ?
When I was younger, I had a question. In school we learn that 1 + 1 = 2. Although we learn how numbers are added, we never learn why numbers are added in the way that they are. Nearly everyone who has been through 'modern' primary education takes this simple process of addition for granted. When I asked my teacher 'why does one plus one equal two?' my teacher replied 'because if you have one thing and another thing and you put them together you get two things.' So then I said 'yeah, but why?' At that point, I was told in a polite manner to shut up.
This question has stuck with my for quite a long time. I did not have any insight into this problem until I became involved in a conversation with a Korean girl in Japan. I told her about my question and my teacher's anwser. She then told me that one plus one does not necessary equal two. She said 'if you have one ball of mochi and another ball of mochi and you put them together you get one ball of mochi' (mochi is a compacted rice gum-like food). It is also interesting to note that a couple of years later I asked another Korean woman this same question and she gave me a similar anwser.
That was the catalyst for my insight. Addition in its western form depends exclusively on the arbitrary division of objects/things. That is to say - there has to be a separation of things. Something has to say that this is 'this' and that is 'that'. Objectively, speaking any division between substances in entirely arbitrary. The questions regarding where one thing begins and another ends have been addressed by cognitive linguists and philosophers for quite some time. Nevertheless, what it all comes down to is that 'something' or 'someone' is separating things.
So, this simple question - a child's question. Let me to a even more profound question. If there is objectively no division between things in the physical world, then the division must be being made somewhere else. However, even if this 'somewhere else' - a platonic world of forms so to speak existed, there still would need to be a connection between the physical and the form. The connection must be related to people. Forms have no significance outside of consciousness. So, all this lengthy seemingly intellectual rambling has led me to a very simple question. Who perceives the divisions between 'things'? For this 'who' cannot exist in the physical or in the forms for it to be able to participate in both - it must transcend it. Thus, words or physical substances could never capture its essence. How can we see this 'who'? Where is it?
Honestly, I don't know.