Classifications

 

Do I Love You Because You’re Beautiful

Do I want you because you're wonderful,
Or are you wonderful because I want you?
Are you the sweet invention of a lover's dream
Or are you really as beautiful as you seem?

Why can’t it be both? Wonderful AND Beautiful.

There is a basic tendency to classify things. If you are to classify anything there have to be at least two classifications: odd and even; day and night; yin and yang; side one and side two; etc. There can be more than two classifications, but not fewer.  But how should an absolute be classifed? There was an advertising campaign for Miller Lite Beer in the 1980s: Less Filling, Tastes Great. The advertisements typically took place in the form of an argument by each side as to which side the beer belonged. The punch line is that it belonged to both. It was Less Filling AND Tastes Great.

The concept of being both things is hardly unique to Miller Lite Beer. Certs Mints had a similar advertising campaign. Is it a candy mint? Is it a breath mint? It’s two, two, two mints in one. 

In mathematics, infinity is an absolute. An integer might be classified as odd or even. So is infinity odd or even? This is not a trivial question. If an integer is even, then at half of that integer there is an equal amount above and below that integer. And half of an even integer is still an integer. By contrast, if an integer is odd, then at half of that integer there is also an equal amount above and below that value.  But half of an odd integer is no longer an integer. If odd and even behave differently, how is infinity to be classified? The answer is that it is classified as BOTH. For any odd or even integer, the median and the mean need not be the same. But at infinity they are defined as being the same, and thus infinity can be defined as both odd and even.

This insight is not unique to advertising and mathematics. St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, 3:18, according to the King James version is translated as

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

That does not mean that there are no differences. People can have a religion or an ethnicity. People can be free or slave. People can be male or female. But as far as the absolute is concerned, these classifications do not matter and they certainly don’t apply to the absolute. The absolute is both.