Saturday, June 13, 2009

About the Nature of Opposites and "negatives"

It is often said that (in theory) for every positive there must be a negative, in order to maintain "the balance of the universe. I posit that this is not the case.

Notice that in order to be a 'negative' the object (for lack of a more general term) must be the 'negative' OF something. Therefore, the existence of an opposite/'negative' is necessarily dependent on the preexistence of a positive.

On the other hand, a positive is an independent assertion. A positive is not a positive OF something, it simply is.

There are further conceptual issues with this idea of balance. Take a number line for example. Let's assign the value of 6 to our object in question. We mark 6 on the number line. To achieve "balance", our mark must move 6 units left (for simplicity) to return to 0 i.e. our point of balance. The problem here lies in the fact that though our object is loosing value with each progressive unit/step back towards 0, it's value is nonetheless still positive - not negative at all. so where is this 'negative'?

It is being canceled by each unit removed in our steps to zero. As such, why are we now counting from 6? as opposed to zero?

1 comment:

  1. The reason that 0 is positive is simply out of convention. If you think about it, it makes no difference if it is positive or negative. You can put a + or - in front of any 0 in any equation and the result will always be the same. Also you overlooked the idea of simultaneity. Negatives and positives are created simultaneously thus removing the need for a preexisting opposite. Everywhere around us there are particles and their antiparticles popping into space simultaneously most of the time they quickly find each other again and annihilate sometimes they don't.

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