Log24

" Lying at the axis of everything, zero is both real and imaginary. Lovelace was fascinated by zero; as was Gottfried Leibniz, for whom, like mathematics itself, it had a spiritual dimension. It was this that let him to imagine the binary numbers that now lie at the heart of computers: 'the creation of all things out of nothing through God's omnipotence, it might be said that nothing is a better analogy to, or even demonstration of such creation than the origin of numbers as here represented, using only unity and zero or nothing.' He also wrote, 'The imaginary number is a fine and wonderful recourse of the divine spirit, almost an amphibian between being and nonbeing.' "

— A footnote from page 229 of Sydney Padua's
    April 21, 2015, book on Lovelace and Babbage

From The French Mathematician
by Tom Petsinis (Nov. 30, 1998) —

0

I had foreseen it all in precise detail.
One step led inevitably to the next,
like the proof of a shining theorem,
down to the conclusive shot that still echoes
through time and space. 
Facedown in the damp pine needles,
I embraced that fatal sphere
with my whole body. Dreams, memories,
even the mathematics I had cherished
and set down in my last will and testament–
all receded. I am reduced to
a singular point; in an instant
I am transformed to i .

i = an imaginary being

Here, on this complex space,
i  am no longer the impetuous youth
who wanted to change the world
first with a formula and then with a flame.
Having learned the meaning of infinite patience,
i  now rise to the text whenever anyone reads 
about Evariste Galois, preferring to remain 
just below the surface, 
like a goldfish nibbling the fringe of a floating leaf.
Ink is more mythical than blood
(unless some ancient poet slit his 
vein and wrote an epic in red):
The text is a two-way mirror 
that allows me to look into
the life and times of the reader. 
Who knows, someday i  may rise
to a text that will compel me 
to push through to the other side.
Do you want proof that i  exist? Where am i ?
Beneath every word, behind each letter, 
on the side of a period that will never see the light.