ERROR

After yesterday's brush with infinity it seems appropriate to start this morning off with a zero. This would be a state of normality for most calculators, poised in readiness for mathematical action. But the Error symbol implies forethought on my calculator's part, some previous computation that did not compute.

There is nothing in its memory to suggest what might have confused it so, only the blank stare of the zero. Zero itself is an interesting concept, almost purely hypothetical in nature - in reality something either exists or it doesn't.

To say there is zero amount of something, say elephants in my pocket for example, is not simply a measure of an object's quantity, but of its position in space and time. Those elephants won't magically appear out of thin air, so they must be out there somewhere. Just not in my pocket at this particular moment in time. If the elephants weren't out there ready to invade my trousers then the question of how many are (or are not) in my pockets is meaningless.

Since nothing ever miraculously appears from nothingness it follows that there is no such thing as zero - if something isn't here then it will be somewhere else. If it isn't anywhere else then it doesn't exist and you can't assign a quantity to something that is non-existant, surely...

I can see now how such contemplation can only end in confusion. I'll just have to assume these were the shapes of my calculator's thoughts last night - I'm getting my own error-messages just thinking about it.