1+1=2
Marvin Shim
If someone demanded proof that 1+1=2, what would you do? Maybe you would grab an object, say an apple, and place it next to another apple and count them. You get two apples.
It might seem straightforward to you, so you might ask, why am I questioning this? Who am I to question the truth? But is truth really self-evident, or just something we take for granted? Why does it make sense?
My dictionary says that a fact is a “thing that is known or proved to be true.” So I flipped to the T section, and found “truth”. It’s defined as “the quality or state of being true.” Found “true”. True is defined as being “in accordance with fact or reality.”
So… A fact is a fact. We’re going in circles. We’re floating in space. We've made a name that feels like it should explain everything, but we don’t understand what it means. Truth can’t answer my question, because it is an enigma itself.
The idea that there is a fixed reality, governed by immutable laws, has been a cornerstone of human understanding. From the most basic principles of mathematics to the grander abstract laws of physics, we generally assume these are the rules the universe must follow. This is the objective reality. This is the truth. But the only reason you believe the truth is the truth is because someone told you it was.
The only reason why you know the refrigerator is silver, or water is water, or that the act of walking is walking is because we were told this. And we have no reason not to trust, because everyone believes the same, and thus it “logically” makes sense.
Walking is the act of putting one leg in front of the other. What’s a leg? It's made up of bones, tissues, and blood. What are bones? They’re made up of proteins and minerals. What are those made up of? Molecules. Molecules are made of atoms. Atoms are made of particles. The list goes on. We go to quarks, we go to bosons. Forgive me biologists and physicians if I missed something.
I’m no STEM guy, but there’s something I do know is missing here. The journey from an idea to the foundational base is endless. And there’s a reason for that; it's because we believe that there is a foundational base to this universe. That there is a fundamental layer of existence that everything can be traced to. The ancient Greeks thought the elements were the fundamental components. Then we discovered atoms. Then we moved to subatomic particles. Now we have even smaller particles. The search for the “ultimate building block” is an infinite chase, no matter how far we go, we never quite reach it; every time we think we’re at the finish line, we find it to be but a checkpoint. We’re chasing shadows, and the light keeps moving farther away from us.
Science is the search for the truth. And because we believe that there is an ultimate foundation, the singular unshakeable truth of reality, we continuously search for the proof of the truth. So we zoomed into matter. We found the atom. Then we found something smaller. As we kept zooming in, we didn't get answers, we got more questions. The more we seemed to understand, the further away we seemed to get to something absolute. And now that we have found the quantum world, where everything has a probability and is anything but simple, we must realize that the foundational reality might be just one of our greatest illusions.
We cling to the idea of a solid foundation because it feels safer. We want to believe that beneath the chaos of the universe lies a predictable order. A truth. Something that just “is”. We want truth to be something static, because that fits the way we see the world. We have names for things, and these names help us create categories, and these categories give us a sense of control. When we can call something a refrigerator, we all have the same basic understanding of what that is, and it allows us to experience with some semblance of certainty.
But it's all a hierarchy of abstractions. Each explanation builds upon the last, when in the end, we don’t even know where it ends up. We have understood that 1+1=2. So what is 1? And here’s the only answer I’ve found: 1. The identity property of 1 says that any number multiplied by 1 keeps its identity. So what is that identity? What decided the entity that we call 1 today? It’s just 1 because that’s the way we’ve defined it.
We built these frameworks to describe the world, but the more we understand them, the more we realize we can never truly capture the complexity of what we experience. We are fooling ourselves whenever we attempt to justify something with “objectivity”, because the truth we hold so dear is not self-evident, it's something we’ve created. The frameworks we’ve developed to interpret the universe, language, math, and science, are powerful tools. But they are just that. Tools. They are not reality itself. This doesn’t mean that these frameworks are irrelevant, they provide us a way of navigating reality, but we must recognize the boundaries of these tools.