72. A Meditation on the Number Nought. 

Dearly Beloved,

My five year old Grandson informed me that the number nought was really quite a high number because there are as many minus numbers below it as there were positive numbers above it. Well, I was brought to nought by his comment and wondered “where can one go from nought?” 

I stumbled across the answer at King's Cross station at Platform 0. If one takes a train from Platform 0, it is always in a hurry and having traveled 60 miles, it eventually stops at a station adjacent to the AstraZeneca offices. That company has so far produced three billion Covid vaccines at cost and distributed then around the world to offset the recent epidemic of the Covid 19 viruses.

But this is not the only wonder in the town, for it is full of ideas, some practical and some less so. If you wish to know about magnetism or magnesium, caesium or Californium, romanticism, communism, communitarianism, disestablishmentarianism or stoicism, this is the place for you. If you wish to think about how we humans think, you will find a philosophy department, where Analytical Philosophy started off and where the playing of language games is still not allowed. This is where Wittgenstein produced a philosophy branded “brilliant” and then abandoned it, wrote a new philosophy which was also branded “brilliant”. If you wish to discover how thin film magnetism will change the world or work at a temperature just 1.3c above absolute zero, there is a place for you too at the Rutherford laboratory. Here the formula E = mc^2 was first experimentally demonstrated and the electron was first described – although, despite their ubiquity -- we still don't know where any electron is at any one moment (possibly they are all waiting at platform 0), so clearly there is still work to do. 

 Darwin, who caused alarm and despondency among ecclesiastics by showing that Genesis 1 may not contain a literal description of creation, was educated at one of those numerous academic colleges (Christ's), most of which were originally set up to teach theology and educate those very ecclesiastics. Despite these colleges having since expanded into a myriad of fields you can still hear evensong beautifully sung in the Chapels of St John's College, Trinity or King's or Gonville and Caius and others too. And just over the road from St John's is St Clement's church which is being prepared for the installation of six newly cast bells, still silver in their unoxidised innocence. And when you need a rest from it all, stroll across Jesus Green to where quiet flows the Cam. There you can be intimidated by those swans, so serene, yet paddling so hard beneath the water to keep up with developments.

Platform 9 and three quarters at King'd Cross railway station takes one to Hogwort's, the realm of fantastic possibilities, but starting at Platform nought at King's Cross takes you to Cambridge, a town where infinite, new realities are being perceived and expounded daily. Surely starting from a platform nought leads to extraordinary revelations?

Peace,

Paul.

Photo: Paul Munton.
Follow The Arrow To Platform 0 And Find A New Universe.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  An Introduction to T he Manifold Letters. These letters were produced as part of a brilliant project managed by the Rev. Robert and Sarah Van de Weyer. During the Covid-19 pandemic. Letters were written every day for two and a half years by both ordained and lay members of the congregation of St Clement's Church in Cambridge and distributed to others both in the congregation and people outwith St Clement's as Dearly Beloved letters. (DB letters). They dealt with manifold issues including psychological survival during the pandemic, personal stories and experiences of life, philosophy and theology, music, the beauty of creation, wildlife and secular and church politics, the mysteries of the Christian faith and the exigencies of the pursuit of a Christian life. Each letter was accompanied by a photograph all of which can be enlarged by clicking on them. The Rt Rev. Rowan Williams was a contributor for six months whilst he worshiped and officiated at the St Clement's during...
Read more
Image
76. On The Anti-Christian Nature of the Small State Ideology. Nearly Beloved*, The first time I heard the cry for a “Small State” in the political context, it was uttered by those involved in a dispute over US grazing lands. The “s cofflaw” , Cliven Bundy, refused to pay the Federal Grazing Fees or recognise his obligations to the US government's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on whose lands his cattle grazed. In 2014 and 2016, the Bureau's response was to round up his cattle and remove them. That led to the congregation of armed anti-government activists, including the Proud Boys. These armed groups forced the BLM to back down because the Bureau was worried about the safety of its staff and of the public and felt unable to protect them. The US Government failed to support its own laws and regulation in the face of armed threat. This, and similar range land incidents, occurred prior to the assault on the US Capital by armed activists in an attempt to reverse the result of t...
Read more
Image
24. On War. Dearly Beloved, It is difficult for us to cope with a war in Europe so close to home, especially because it is a war within Christendom between Christian communities. Apart from the civil war in Herzegovina, there has been peace in Europe for 77 years. My father was 28 years old and my mother 22 when war broke out in 1939. My father was already in the Royal Navy and my mother joined the Auxillary Territoral Service. “The War” in my family continued in talk and discussion long after the fighting had actually stopped. It was the background to my childhood and was made more prominent when my mother organised her family to fly us out to Malta in 1953 where my father's ship lay in Sliema Creek. We lodged close by whilst he finished an extra year of service obligated by the Korean War. One my earliest memories is of looking down from a prop driven Vickers Viscount aircraft at the ships on the Mediterranean sea shining in the sun far below. That was the same Mediterrane...
Read more